Senior Principal, FTL Design Engineering Studio
Nic Goldsmith is a Principal of FTL Design Engineering Studio. Using innovative structural elements, he has helped pioneer lightweight technologies over the past forty years into an art form. A graduate of Cornell University, his work has been greatly influenced by Bucky Fuller, Felix Candela and Frei Otto with whom he apprenticed in Germany for three years. He designed FTL’s legacy projects including the Carlos Mosley Pavilion for the Metropolitan Opera, the Rosa Parks Transit Center, ASU Skysong, the DKNY Headquarters, and the Sun Valley Pavilion. He was instrumental in designing the Cooper Hewitt’s “Under the Sun” exhibition with the first integrated PV tensile structure.
He has been a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Design Studio of the University of Pennsylvania for fourteen years, an adjunct professor at Pratt Institute, Cornell and Visiting Professor at Innsbruck, Austria. He has given a wide range of lectures on lightweight structures worldwide and was the Chair of the Fabric Structures Association. Nic’s new book Mass to Membrane explains the evolution of architecture from heavy buildings to membrane structures.
