Mike Martinez

“Design analysis done right enables owners and designers to grasp the totality of their decisions, and make clear-eyed and humane choices in projects,” says Mike, a member of SmithGroup’s IMPACT leadership team dedicated to sustainable design innovation. He points out that it also has incredible potential for exponential impact. “Each new refinement makes the next generation of projects better— yesterday’s bleeding edge becomes tomorrow’s code baseline.” Mike brings particular expertise in integrated facade design for human experience, visual comfort, and thermal delight. He can talk technical glass specifications with the best of them and once worked on a project at Cal Tech’s Linde + Robinson Lab reengineering a 60-foot-long solar telescope into a daylighting device that redirects sunbeams into fiber optic daylight fixtures. The Kimball Art Museum is a favorite building, one he calls “sublime and daylighting perfection.” In his free time, Mike loves rocking out with his young boys in “the music room” (as long as they’ll let him), hiking Oakland’s redwood forests with his family, and seeking out the quirky HiFi listening bars of Tokyo.