Gerhard is Senior Advisor and subject matter expert at Diplomatica.
He is an architect who embraces a paradigm shift towards walkable, multimodal, equitable and sustainable high-quality urban living. Originally from Vienna (Austria), he emigrated to the US on a Fulbright Scholarship in Sustainable Design and Architecture. He taught design studio at his Alma Mater (RPI) but abandoned an academic career in favor of a life of “learning through doing”.

 

In pursuit of this goal, he worked in many different firms, on four continents. His experiences include work with the father of tropical modernism - Geoffrey Bawa in Sri Lanka, where projects were designed more in full scale mock-ups than in careful drawings; with Gensler on European movie studios where the cultural clashes between US methods and European tradition required a daily bridge- building; with Frank Gehry for almost 8 years on a variety of projects, where the firm explored the possibilities of digital modeling towards unique non-linear design solutions that were actually built; work on semiconductor factories in Germany and work with his own firm in Southern California.

 

Gerhard is currently focused on quality and sustainable urban design; he is convinced that it is the medium through which one can address many of the shortcomings of our built environment and solve intractable urban problems. He led many teams large and small toward designing authentic places that create beauty in ways that are intrinsically local and urban.

 

Gerhard is a prolific writer and has started several local initiatives and non-profits that attempt to create a better Southern California. He is fluent in German, his native language.