Dr Gregory Quinn

Biography

Dr Gregory Quinn is an architectural engineer in constant pursuit of design that improves the human experience. He's particularly interested in specialist and lightweight structures, structural design and formfinding. Gregory has worked as a structural engineer for Arup, and as a freelance consultant for Atelier One and Bollinger + Grohmann. He brings international experience and an injection of energy to architectural engineering at Swinburne. ‌

Gregory cares about people and the environment. Humanitarian crises are close to his heart. His desire to deliver structures that help maintain personal dignity amid devastation – by providing larger spaces where families can gather, practice their faith and find emotional healing is being realised through his SheltAir design. SheltAir’s elastic gridshell design is inspired by traditional Bedouin tents and erected pneumatically. Put simply, this curved, lightweight structure is quick to manufacture and efficient to erect – it snaps into place using the very air we breathe.

Gregory sees architectural engineering practice as a deeply creative pursuit. Like the artist who feels just where to place the brush, he wants to help you develop an intuition for engineering behaviour.  “I try to find ways of bridging the gap between theory and that “aha” feeling we get when intuition has been acquired,” he says. 

He’ll go to great lengths to ignite your thinking. He’s developed an augmented reality teaching tool to help users grasp complex structural engineering systems: ‘StructAR’. And you might even get to use it in his studio.

“Understanding engineering behaviour is a bit like learning to ride a bike: intimidating beforehand, but exhilarating in practice. Whether it’s force flow, energy transfer or dynamics, I’d like students not to feel intimidated by the apparent complexities but excited by all of the opportunities that engineering offers.” ‌