Higharc Danville, California

Michael Bergin is Director of Architecture and Co-Founder of Higharc. Throughout his career, he has been dedicated to improving the built environment through design automation. Early in his architecture training, he became dissatisfied with the slow pace and limited accessibility of custom home design. He returned to graduate school and explored the potential to improve these conditions through research into mass-customization of homes. He applied these concepts in practice as a Principal Research Scientist at Autodesk developing Dreamcatcher; a product enabling design automation for the automotive and aerospace industries. This effort culminated in the release of Autodesk Generative Design. Prior to Higharc, he led the research team focused on the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industries at Autodesk, developing methods to accelerate building design through deep learning and artificial intelligence. Michael has given lectures and taught courses at dozens of universities including UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Georgia Tech and the Southern California Institute of Architecture. His work has been covered broadly including in the Wall Street Journal, WIRED, Dwell and the MIT Technology Review.