Ballroom A
The Grand Tour: A Showcase of the World’s Most Innovative and Resilient Infrastructure
Architects, planners, engineers, and designers are responding to the climate resilience challenge with tremendous innovation and creativity.
Rives Taylor has more than 30 years’ experience in institutional and commercial architecture with 25 years spent focusing on strategic planning, programming, and sustainable design, scaled from facility operations to campus and city planning. A Texas-practicing architect/educator, Rives directs Gensler’s Firmwide Design Resilience Task Force. He casts a wide net in elevating both the why and how of sustainable design, including students, faculty, professionals, public officials and the general public. In 25 years as adjunct professor at the University of Houston and visiting professor at Rice University, Rives has influenced more than 5,000 students in his technical and high-performance design studios and seminars.
The approaches Rives developed for Gensler not only affect the firm’s extensive practice but also influence clients’ building decisions worldwide. He developed a firm-wide green practice primer called “The Four Tiers of Sustainability,” led the inclusion of sustainable design in the firm’s in-house education program, and in partnership with Architecture 2030 and the Design Futures Council, developed an “eco-charrette” process and developed a building performance metric that is now used in all of Gensler’s projects.
Most recently Rives led Gensler’s delegation to the Paris Climate Conference/Agreement and led the editorial team for the “Impact by Design” publication in September.
Rives developed design and construction standards for clients such as ExxonMobil and Toyota are now embedded in those clients’ protocols and are followed worldwide.