Architect: Eugene Tssui

Eugene Tssui is a maverick architect and a designer to profoundly study, analyze and implement the workings of natural phenomena, through an interdisciplinary approach, as a basis for design at all scales including construction materials and methods. He is the originator of the term, Evolutionary Architecture, which is an understanding of producing designs based upon a rigorous scientific study of natural organisms, structures and processes. His seminal work sweeps us into the 21st century and shows us the ineffable and fantastic intelligence of nature and the compelling possibilities of an architecture that aligns itself with nature's genius.

Eugene Tssui was apprenticed to the renowned American architect, Bruce Goff, from 1976 until Goff's death in 1982. Goff, who was a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright and one of the most inventive and iconoclastic architects, once described Eugene as the most gifted and creative young man he’d ever encountered for 52 years of teaching students and training apprentices;

“I have never before met a young man in architecture with such drive. If this praise seems too strong, it is only because he deserves it, and earned it in my office. Individual creative and imaginative works keep bursting froth when they must. Revolution is evolution made apparent. Today’s “radical” is tomorrow’s “classic.” I have every faith that Eugene Tssui will be so regarded.”
– Bruce Goff, 1982

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, of Chinese parents and fluent in the Mandarin Chinese and English languages, Eugene Tssui holds four professional degrees in architecture and city and regional planning having attended the University of Oregon, Columbia University Graduate School of Design and the University of California, Berkeley where he received an Interdisciplinary Doctorate in Architecture and Education. He has won numerous scholarships and professional research grants including those from the Graham Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts (Canada). At the age of seventeen he won an "Honorable Mention for Most Exciting Design" from an American Institute of Architects competition. He attended McGill University and was an intern architect at the age of nineteen and at twenty was the youngest member of the Organizing Committee of the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics design team as the assistant to the Senior Coordinator.

Tssui is a true “Renaissance man”: an athlete, designer, and singular visual artist, as well as architect. He is the author of four publications on Architecture. THE URGENCY OF CHANGE (2002), EVOLUTIONARY ARCHITECTURE: NATURE AS A BASIS FOR DESIGN, SHENZHEN ECOLOGICAL THEME PARK CONCEPT BOOK, and a monograph by WORLD ARCHITECTURE REVIEW. He is a four-time Senior Olympics Gymnastics All-Around Champion, eight-time World Amateur Boxing Champion and eight-time Presidential Sports Winner awarded by US President’s Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

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