Entrepreneur of the Year 2024: Architects Michael Green and Natalie Telewiak are shaping the future of wood buildings

THE KICKOFF: “Every time people go into my buildings that are wood, I notice they react completely differently.”

That’s how Michael Green, founder of Michael Green Architecture, begins to explain the impact of wood buildings in a 2013 TED Talk titled “Michael Green: Why We Should Build Wooden Skyscrapers.” Green goes on to say: “I’ve never seen anybody walk into one of my buildings and hug a steel or a concrete column. But I’ve actually seen that happen in a wood building.”

He addresses climate change, urbanization and population growth, and argues that wood buildings can not only help alleviate these problems, they can also be constructed with fire safety and sustainable forestry in mind. Plus, they allow people to connect with nature in built environments.

Ideas like this placed MGA at the forefront of the mass timber movement. “We actually defined the term ‘mass timber,’” says Green, who launched the firm in Vancouver in 2012. But he was having those ­conversations as far back as 2007, when Natalie Telewiak, an architect with a master’s degree on the subject from UBC, joined McFarlane Green Biggar Architecture + Design, where she met Green for the first time. “And we’ve been working together since,” she says.

ACTION PLAN: Telewiak started as an associate at MGA and became partner in 2018. With “separate and complementary skills,” Green and Telewiak tackle complex issues in an industry that’s famously resistant  to change.

“I focus on leading larger groups of stakeholders and team collaboration… and Michael is this external voice leading the conversation at a global scale,” Telewiak says.

“Yeah, Nat holds down the fort while I go out and blab,” jokes Green.

Their partnership is fluid and collaborative, their designs elegant and simple—or “quiet,” as Green describes them. “Most of the buildings that people talk about or that developers are interested in are the opposite of quiet. They’re trying to be like, ‘Look at me, I’m cool.’ And the problem is, they’re cool for this decade. You don’t want to build buildings that are cool for a decade,” he says.

Green has found some allies in that stance—the 2013 TED Talk opened MGA’s doors to the rest of the world, including a deal to design Google’s mass timber offices in California. “To be able to have the power of Google’s voice behind the story we’ve been telling for decades is hugely important to us,” he says.

CLOSING STATEMENT: With a team of 40 employees and offices in Vancouver, Victoria and Portland (plus new ones launching in New York and Spain), MGA has worked with around 80 clients to date, ranging from corporations to First Nations. It has supported commercial, residential and institutional projects (among others) around the world.

As of September, MGA is designing a new building for the Royal BC Museum in Colwood, as well as the new 55-storey Marcus Performing Arts Center in Milwaukee, which will reportedly be the world’s tallest mass timber skyscraper.

Q+A

Do you have any embarrassing obsessions?

NT: Spreadsheets.

MG: The bridge of my dog’s  nose where I kiss her  goodnight.