Brandon Clifford

architect, educator

Boston, US

sculptures design architectural building
About

Brandon Clifford develops creative approaches to the world’s most pressing problems. He identifies contemporary blind-spots by mining ancient knowledge that holds resonance with topics of today. He is best known for bringing megalithic sculptures to life to perform tasks. Brandon is the director and co-founder of Matter Design. He is also an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brandon received his Master of Architecture from Princeton University and his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Georgia Tech. Brandon is a designer and researcher who has received recognition with prizes such as the American Academy in Rome Prize, a TED Fellowship, the SOM Prize, the Design Biennial Boston Award, and the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects & Designers. His work at Matter Design is focused on re-directing architectural research through spectacle and mysticism by re-posing a series of ancient, but hauntingly relevant questions. For instance, could walking massive statues help us design for transportation and assembly? Is the key to recycling our building materials locked inside the cryptic walls suspected of being built by primordial giants? These ancient ways of thinking compound cultural significance, ceremony, and mythology with technical and methodological procedures that have the potential to resolve our contemporary problems. Brandon is dedicated to challenging default solutions by making things that disrupt common practices.mit.edu/faculty/brandon-clifford