Architecture

I have worked for a number of distinguished firms over the years and the architecture projects shown here are all attributed to where I worked.

I studied at Cambridge University under Sir Leslie Martin and Colin StJohn Wilson at a time when Modernism was ascendant, and graduated with an MA and Diploma in Architecture in 1970. At Cambridge I had a number of great teachers including Richard Saul Wurman, who encouraged me to travel to a different continent each year (before, as he said, “you got waylaid by marriages and mortgages!”). In 1968 I and four other students drove 5,000 miles across Europe to Moscow to see the work of the Russian Constructivists and then up to Helsinki to pay homage to Alvar Aalto. The following year I first visited the States to work with Ricky Wurman in his office in Philadelphia and travelled the country by Greyhound Bus, witnessing amongst other things the tickertape welcome for the Apollo 11 astronauts in Chicago. On visiting San Francisco I first met my future business partner Daniel Solomon who had just established his own small practice designing houses and whose work based on a knowledge of traditional urbanism interested me as a path forward. It was in Ricky Wurman’s office that I met my first wife Becky Freed (1941-2009) whom I married the following summer in California while working with Jack MacAllister, another former teacher at Cambridge, in La Jolla where he had been Louis Kahn’s Project Architect for the Salk Laboratories.

On graduating in 1970 I first worked in my father’s practice, Lyons Israel Ellis in London (1970-72) learning how to detail and produce construction drawings. My father was a Brutalist architect whose practice designed schools and housing for the Welfare State (see essay in Research ‘Son of as Brutalist’.) I went back to Cambridge for a few years to work with my teacher David Roberts on designs for various colleges and an extension to the Fitzwilliam Museum (1972-74), before returning to work in London with Richard MacCormac designing social housing for Milton Keynes and Warrington New Towns (1974-77). Richard remained a lifelong friend and mentor and opened up ideas about sources other than straight Modernism.

Aged 30, I emigrated to California with my young family in 1977 and spent a few years finding my way in the Bay Area including time with ELS in Berkeley (1978-82) working on a new town in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. I spent ten years with KMD in San Francisco (1982-92) where I worked on a number of major projects including the Oakland Federal Building, Plaza Park Tower in Sacramento, and Stevenson Place and the renovation of the Flood Building in San Francisco with Jeff Heller, David Hobstetter and Jeff Horowitz. KMD was an influential experience despite the precarious position everyone who worked there experienced with the irascible Herb McLaughlin. After ten years I moved to Anshen + Allen (1992-96) to work again with Jack MacAllister and Derek Parker and designed the Far East International Building in Pudong, Shanghai, and the Kaiser Medical Building in San Francisco.

Since 1996 I have worked with Daniel Solomon as a partner and Director of Urban Design in various identities and mergers as Solomon Ellis Torney; WRT/Solomon ETC; Daniel Solomon Design Partners; and Mithun/ Solomon. The major focus has been on social housing and urban design including campus planning. I have been blessed with outstanding colleagues including Christopher Pizzi, Madeleine Zayas, Anne Torney, Lisa Jacks, Malcolm Harris, Kimberly Perette, Ganesh Ramachandran and Mohammad Momin.

A number of competition entries are also included to explore ideas and the opportunity to collaborate with friends and colleagues. These include the Chicago Tribune Late Entries Competition with Frank Israel (1988), the Rancho Mirage Civic Center with Anko Chen (1994), the Sunset District Housing Competition with Dicko Ba (2023) and the Denver Single Stair Competition with Chang Xu (2025).