Mark Bassett

Senior Associate at Gensler

Summary

Mark's career is characterized by the continual fusion of art and technology. He is driven by a strong desire to create beautiful things in the fields of Fine Art and Architecture and a fascination for technology's ability to leverage and magnify an individual's capabilities and talents. Because of his experience as an artist, architect, programmer, he is comfortable working within and across art and science to advance the built environment.

Mark is an accomplished fine artist, having supported himself as a self-employed painter of water color, oil, acrylic and egg tempera portraits and landscapes. He is an artist member of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and recipient of one of its major awards for painting. He has worked as an architect, primarily on the design side, contributing to projects that have won AIA and ASLA design awards. He has been an invited speaker on the creative design process and guest critic at several architecture schools. As a technologist he has been engaged in many aspects of business development and operations through his experience working for two Fortune 500 companies and two startups. At these companies he has fulfilled roles in sales, technical sales, product marketing, product management, product design and development, operations management and the raising of capital.

Currently he is focusing his attention on the virtual reality space - another fascinating intersection of art and technology - where profound new developments in computational capabilities need to be paired with the richness afforded by multimedia experiences and beautiful story telling. He is able to package resources effectively and efficiently to enable absorption into a firm’s workflow at an affordable price with timely execution using a typical designer’s skill set. He is well versed in overcoming challenges to innovation and in creating demand for new approaches in the risk averse profession of architecture.