Sean A. Gallagher is Principal and Director of Sustainable Design at Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Adjunct Faculty at Columbia University GSAPP, where he explores the intersection of architecture, ecology, and emerging technologies.

Past projects include the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum, the U.S. Massena Land Port of Entry, and Microsoft’s “The Square.”

Most recently, Sean led the biofiltration system design for CanalCafé, recipient of the Golden Lion for Best Participation at the 2025 Venice Biennale. He also served as Design Director for the David Rubenstein Forum in Chicago, named the 2022 Best Tall Building Worldwide by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH).

Current work includes:

• Pardee School of Global Studies (Boston) — the first mass timber academic tower in a major U.S. city.

• Nuevo AZCA (Madrid) — an eight-block urban transformation introducing a new urban forest and ecological infrastructure into the city’s commercial core.

• New York Botanical Garden Eco-Machine + Café — reimagining wastewater as a public resource by using plants and ecological systems to purify New York City’s wastewater to potable quality, demonstrating how infrastructure can become education, architecture, and landscape simultaneously.

Sean believes the future of cities depends on integrating natural systems directly into the urban fabric. Raised in a small Appalachian mountain community by ecologists, he developed an early understanding of how ecosystems function. Over the past 25 years, he has translated those principles into architectural and urban design projects that merge human and natural systems, demonstrating how cities can become healthier, more resilient, and ultimately carbon neutral.