MEET THE SPEAKER\\ Colin Burry, Design Director Gensler, London

Colin Burry, Design Director Gensler, London, will be a speaker at SHARE Interiors Bucharest, offering insights into his creative approach and extensive experience

Colin Burry is Principal and Design Director at Gensler, a practice that he has been involved in for nearly 27 years, initially in San Francisco and for the last 3 years in London. His work has been widely recognised and enjoys frequent coverage in international design and business media. Colin Burry has received over 85 design awards, was included into the Interior Design Hall of Fame in 2013 and was considered by San Francisco Magazine as one of the top 100 most influential LGBTQ leaders in the Bay Area. Gensler has been for him a platform where he could find limitless freedom of expression and possibility to operate differently in various projects and challenges. He is a hands-on type of designer while continuously being involved in the process of learning.

 

 

He has been a long-term advocate of design education, championing the advancement of the Interior Design profession through legislative action and continued learning opportunities. In his own suggestive words, Collin Burry describes himself as a “left and right brain designer, creating environments that reflect the client’s ethos, while striving for authenticity and intuitive functionality “. Taking into careful consideration the needs and requests of the people who will use his spaces, he seeks originality, distinctiveness and design choices which are in line with his own way of thinking. He considers himself a  “soft modernist” or a “humanistic modernist” due to the fact that he uses contemporary thinking and techniques to evoke results that garner exceptional human experiences. Collin Burry has restless enthusiasm and he openly embraces artistic influences to stimulate his design process and guides his clients to look for extraordinary places and spaces.

His large expertise ranges from workplace to hospitality, product design, showrooms, Food & Beverage facilities. One of the projects he takes great pride in is the San Francisco International Airports Terminal 2 which was recently rated #4 in the world for passenger experience. He was fortunate to work with great clients and design for many of the world’s most iconic brands, such as Netflix, LEGO, Ericsson, pladis, Barclays, Apple, Airbnb, Facebook, Pixar, Nike, Samsung, and Nokia. His design ethos has been described by many of his clients as “thoughtful, thought provoking and supportive of his clients long term strategic goals”.

 

 

His visions are greatly influenced by his passion for contemporary art, music, photography, travel, and ballet, as he believes that inspiration comes greatly from life experiences, not only from the professional field. In this way, he is also interested in how his designs influence the experience of the users, how his projects end up modelling behaviours, thus leading to a design attitude which is creative, original, but also careful, sensitive and responsible. This position is taken on not only individually by Colin Burry, but by the whole practice of Gensler.

Being conscious that they can shape and impact lives with their projects, Gensler put people at the centre of everything they do, aiming at creating purposeful, inclusive, and resilient spaces for everyone. Beyond the physical definitions of architecture, they strive at building positive experiences.