Mark Sarkisian, PE, SE, NAE, LEED BD+C, is a Partner of Structural and Seismic Engineering at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in San Francisco, California.  He received his BS Degree in Civil Engineering from University of Connecticut where he is a Fellow of the Academy of Distinguished Engineers and his MS Degree in Structural Engineering from Lehigh University.  He also received an honorary Sc.D degree from Clarkson University and an honorary MS degree from the Politecnico di Milano.  In 2021, he was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in the United States.  His career has focused on developing innovative structural engineering solutions for over 100 major building projects around the world, including some of the world’s tallest.  Mark holds 15 U.S. and international patents for high-performance seismic structural mechanisms and environmentally responsible structural systems.  He teaches studio design courses at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Cal Poly, California College of the Arts, North Carolina State University, Northeastern University, and the Pratt Institute and has the written the book entitled “Designing Tall Buildings – Structure as Architecture” with the second edition recently released by Routledge -Taylor & Francis.

Urban Sequoia – Inventive Systems and Biogenic Materials to Reduce Whole Life Carbon
The design of Urban Sequoia combines optimized structural design with low embodied carbon materials, efficient construction, and carbon-capturing technologies. These carbon-capturing approaches allow buildings to start their service life with an ultra-low embodied carbon and sequester additional carbon over time, becoming net carbon negative. The structural approach to Urban Sequoia incorporates nature-based, living biogenic materials that embody far less carbon than conventional structural solutions while absorbing additional carbon over time. When combined with non-structural systems such as exterior wall systems that incorporate biomass and algae and technologies including Direct Air Capture (DAC), tall buildings could absorb three to five times the amount of carbon emitted at the time of construction.
 
Urban Sequoia includes ideas that can be applied to buildings at all scales and uses. The floor framing system, for example, could be used in a building with only a few floors or one that has a hundred floors. The strength of the concept is enhanced when buildings that make up a city combine to become a source of biofuel that can be used to power heating systems, automobiles, and aircraft and create bioprotein. An even broader impact could include using carbon byproducts for infrastructure.