James Garrison (born 1953 in Ridgeway, Pennsylvania) is an American architect and educator who lives, practices, and teaches in Brooklyn, New York. He has two children, Emma Garrison, a marine biologist, and Brendan Garrison, a writer. Growing up in western Pennsylvania, Garrison witnessed nature destroyed by surface mining and clear-cutting. This led to his continuing dedication to ecological protection and an even greater understanding of sustainability in architecture. In 1971, James attended the Syracuse University School of Architecture and there researched new forms of urban housing under the mentorship of Werner Seligman, graduating with design honors. While at Syracuse, he apprenticed with modernists Lewis Skoler and Kermit Lee who conveyed a strong progressive ethos for architecture and society. Garrison joined James Stewart Polshek and Associates, NYC, in 1978 becoming a partner in the succeeding firm, the Polshek Partnership, in 1989. He began to teach and conduct research in building design and technology at Columbia University in 1984 where he taught core studios and directed the architectural technology curriculum until 1992. He has taught at the Pratt Institute since 2008 concentrating on core graduate studios and specialized seminar investigations into industrialized building systems and sustainability. After the rapid growth of Polshek and Partners in the 1980s Garrison established Garrison Architects, a studio-based practice that seeks to create a synthesis of art, sustainability, and engineering. Garrison Architects practice is purposefully diverse with regard to program, scale, material and form. The work is guided by the conviction that the architect must understand and control the building process from design through construction. Valuing craftsmanship as well as digital precision Garrison looks to embrace the human connection to makeing, whether the building of masonry or assembling prefabricated components. This approach includes prefabrication, climate-specific design, solar-induced ventilation, embodied energy reduction and net zero programs for energy, waste, and water. Work in prefabrication has focused on volumetric modular structures and includes the use of industrial design and engineering methods to create sustainable, affordable and highly evolved architectural systems. Garrison's first building to gain national recognition was 500 Park Avenue, designed while he was with James Stewart Polshek and Associates. It drew on his academic work as it sought to demonstrate the potential for modern architecture to re-integrate the fabric of the city. Located at 59th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan, it synthesized the glass architecture of the post-war era with the masonry of the surrounding pre-war