An architect by training and an entrepreneur by nature, Brant’s approach to working in the built environment is both creative and pragmatic. Brant seeks to bridge the gap between emerging ideas in design, technology, and industry disruption to create unexpected results. Working with collaborators across the public and private sectors, Brant brings teams together to realize projects made possible only through unorthodox partnerships.
Brant leads SOM’s global Research + Innovation team, the firm’s experimental think tank, which has spearheaded projects ranging from a prototype for a Covid-responsive naturally ventilated pop-up classroom called ‘School/House,’ to a vault made of glass bricks assembled entirely by robots, realized in collaboration with Global Robots and Princeton’s CreateLab, to Nebula, a modular urban lighting system designed in collaboration with Italian lighting designers Neri.
SOM is known for its paradigm-breaking approach to the practice of design—we were the first architecture firm to bring computers into the studio. Today, we’re reaching across industries to put the best new ideas into practice quickly, pushing boundaries and expanding the role designers can play in driving innovation.
Based in San Francisco and New York, Brant’s building portfolio encompasses work in Korea, China, Southeast Asia, and the United States. His latest work includes Longgang Tian’an Cyber Park, a tech and entertainment campus in Shenzhen, Lotte Town Tower in Busan, a landmark supertall tower in South Korea’s second biggest city, and the Feidi Next C Master Plan, an urban development and wetland restoration near Tianjin. In his hometown of New York, Brant completed the luxury Baccarat Hotel & Residences in Midtown, 101 Warren Street, a residential complex that transformed a 2-acre site in Tribeca, and a master plan for five city blocks of former industrial sites adjacent to the United Nations Headquarters.
