Blaise Cannon

Undergraduate Faculty

After graduating with honors and highest distinction from the University of Kansas with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy in 2011, Blaise Cannon preserved the critical thinking skills and the rigorous perspective on meaning that experienced provided. Immediately after completing his undergraduate degree, he began working for the Office of Admissions at Kansas. This rekindled and truly ignited a broad interest in the built environment and urban issues writ large. He was able to both experience and contribute to the inner workings of a large institution of higher education as well as travel the country recruiting students. In doing so, he was able to experience architecture and specific typologies in a concentrated and iterative fashion. Leveraging this academic and professional experience, he became a Master of Architecture candidate at the University of Kansas in 2013.

Blaise’s previous professional experience allowed him to take a leadership role in his academic cohort and his philosophy education provided a unique perspective on the conceptual design problems being presented in early studios. He had further opportunity to superimpose previous experiences onto his architectural education when he served as a teaching assistant for an architectural theory course, and later for a comprehensive design studio.

Transitioning from the academic world to the professional, Blaise spent much of 2015 in Paris working on a joint venture of HW Architects and Ateliers Jean Nouvel on the Louvre Abu Dhabi as well as several other competitions and projects. Given the advanced stages of the Louvre Abu Dhabi at the time of my involvement, he primarily served as a three-dimensional trouble-shooter interpreting original design intent from Jean Nouvel and other directors and overlaying the technical requirements of the built project to create a rich and functionally sound outcome.

Upon Blaise’s return to the US, he spent six months working for a boutique firm in Kansas City, International Architects Atelier. His work there was in a variety of areas from construction details for classroom retrofits and historic restorations to new museum and park pavilion projects. This all prepared him for his current practice at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP. His role as a designer is herein supplemented by his abilities with documentation software such as Autodesk Revit.

He has thus far worked on three different buildings for the upcoming UC Merced 2020 campus expansion project at various stages from early schematic design through construction documents.