A world-class team has been assembled to design and construct the Future Museum.
Unique to this particular project, the full team has been collaborating since the beginning, building on the ideas and expertise of each team member and each firm. The team kicked off the project with a tour of Wisconsin, which proved to be instrumental to grounding the project in the natural wonders and diverse cultures found across the state.
Architecture Team
Ennead Architects is an internationally-acclaimed, New York-based studio with offices in New York City and Shanghai. Renowned for its innovative educational, cultural, scientific, and civic building designs that authentically express the progressive missions of their institutions and enhance the vitality of the public realm, Ennead is a leader in the design world. They are recipients of the prestigious Smithsonian Institution-Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, the AIA NY Medal of Honor, and the National AIA Firm Award as well as numerous design awards for individual buildings.
Since their founding in Milwaukee in 1908, Kahler Slater has been trusted to deliver some of Wisconsin’s most transformative projects including the Milwaukee Art Museum Calatrava addition, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s Bradley Symphony Center, UW-Madison’s Kohl Center, and the Wisconsin State Capitol renovation.
GGN is a landscape architecture firm based in Seattle with backgrounds in landscape design, architecture, art, engineering, and ecology. GGN offers extensive experience in designing high-use landscapes in complex, urban contexts. GGN is the recipient of the 2017 ASLA National Landscape Architecture Firm Award and the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Architecture in 2011. The firm’s project awards include ASLA National Awards of Excellence, ASLA and AIA Honor Awards for Design, Tucker Design Awards, Society for Campus and University Planning Awards, and Great Places Awards from the Environmental Design Research Association.
Exhibition Design
Thinc Design is a leading design firm serving clients in North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, which will be working with the Milwaukee Public Museum. For more than 25 years, Thinc has designed projects for a wide range of museums, science centers, aquariums, zoos, theme parks, corporations, and governments, including Expo 2020 Dubai, the Seattle Aquarium, the Smithsonian Institution, the National September 11 Memorial Museum, and the California Academy of Sciences.
Construction Management
Mortenson will oversee construction of the new building, using their experience in constructing complex venues to bring the vision of the community, MPM leadership, and the aforementioned creative teams to life. Mortenson has teamed with ALLCON, a local, Hispanic, woman-owned general contracting firm on the project.
Tom Hennes
Principal & Founder, Thinc Design
Tom Hennes founded Thinc Design in 1995 as an extension of a 15-year career as a theatrical designer in New York. Under his guidance, the award-winning Thinc has successfully completed visitor experiences for museums, visitor centers, zoos, aquaria, art installations, and cultural attractions all over the world. Corporate clients included AT&T, Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, Universal Studios, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and IBM. Believing in the implicit power of the exhibition medium to engage society in important ways, Tom has pursued an ever-deeper involvement with projects embedded in social and environmental justice. In the same vein, he has encouraged an evolving conception at Thinc of relational design, which envisions the exhibition as a narrative environment rich in implicit and explicit confluences, contradictions, and paradoxes. Tom has also designed the TED conference stage for nine consecutive years. He has lectured at national and international conferences and is Associate Editor for Curator: The Museum Journal and has also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and Pratt Institute's summer Boisbuchet program. He holds multiple patents for immersive theaters and 3D projection techniques.
Helen Divjak
Senior Curator, Thinc Design
Helen Divjak is a Brooklyn-based storyteller, investigator, and cultural navigator with more than 20 years' experience creating public programs, exhibits, and visitor experiences with museums in the US, UK, and Middle East. Her recent projects include MPM and Showstoppers: Spectacular Costumes from Stage and Screen. She has also worked on major capital projects with the Museum of History & Industry in Seattle and London's National Army Museum, as well as with the National Museum of Jordan in Amman, London Transport Museum, Philadelphia Zoo, and the National Archives of both the US and the UK.
Oronde Wright
Senior Designer, Thinc Design
During his career as an exhibit designer, Oronde has worked on zoos, national museums, and international expos; his favorite project was a humble climate exhibit in Kathmandu that focused on teaching school groups how they could deal with climate change.
Jacquelyn Van Eck
Project Manager, Thinc Design
Jacquelyn's project management experience includes 15 years in interior design as designer and project manager. Her aesthetic sensitivity, meticulous attention to detail, and energy carry through in her approach to projects from coordinating complex schedules and vendor relationships to overseeing team productivity and supervising onsite installation. Jacquelyn joined Thinc in 2019 and managed the successful completion of The Power of Science, a permanent exhibit at Miami’s Frost Museum of Science (July 2020). Since then, she has served as project manager on the ongoing renovation of Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, a new exhibition project for UN Live in Denmark, and the National Pulse Memorial and Museum in Orlando, FL.
Clara Morer
Senior Exhibition Designer, Thinc Design
Clara brings more than 16 years of experience as an exhibit designer and project manager. With knowledge, experience, and interest in all stages of a project, she is especially engaged with artifact display, technical development, and production and installation oversight. She has worked on projects such as the Museum of Environmental Sciences in Guadalajara, Mexico, The USA Pavilion for Expo Milano 2015, and The Jordan Museum.
Melanie Feaster
Designer & Data Specialist, Thinc Design
Melanie is a designer with a background working in museums, university galleries, design studios, and non-profit arts organizations. Her diverse skill set includes exhibition design, graphic design, research, and content management. At the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture in Baltimore, MD, she managed the gallery's Civil Rights Archive for the traveling exhibition, For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Melanie also worked as an associate designer at International Arts & Artists in Washington, DC and created the visual identity for various traveling exhibitions. Her exhibition branding packages consisted of logo designs, didactic materials, and exhibition catalogs.
Jorge Martinez
Senior Exhibition Designer, Thinc Design
Jorge has extensive experience working for clients ranging from corporations and zoos to natural science and children's museums. His work blends the best of environmental design. His work has spanned continents, communities, cultures, sciences, and species.
Aki Shigemori
Senior Graphic Designer, Thinc Design
Aki is a senior graphic designer with a versatile background in commercial design, art exhibition, and museum education. Aki's projects include the Connecticut Science Center, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Infinite Variety quilt exhibition, the Discovery Center at Discovery Park of America, the National 9/11 Memorial Museum, exhibits for the MIT Museum and the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, the USA Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Jordan Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the World Science Forum 2017 Jordan.
Chelsey Trejo
Content Developer, Thinc Design
Chelsey is a designer, artist, researcher, and musician. Curiosity has guided her to take on diverse roles, including scientific researcher, museum educator, curatorial assistant, freelance artist, and community organizer. The museum and exhibit design field has allowed her to synthesize these experiences into her current position as a content developer for Thinc. Her work is anchored in her scientific training, her values as an ally to underrepresented and marginalized communities, and her passion for communicating cultural and scientific ideas in engaging and accurate ways.
Chris Muller
Senior Exhibition Designer, Thinc Design
Chris is an artist and designer based in Brooklyn, NY. A background in theatrical and film design informs his work in many fields, including his work in museum and exhibit design over the last 25 years. He has designed for the Museum of African Art, the Jewish Museum, the New York Historical Society, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, the National World War II Museum, the Children's Museum of Manhattan, the Morbid Anatomy Museum, and many others. As a production designer and digital artist, Chris has worked on Broadway, opera, and television as well as illustrating a children's book for the National Geographic Society.
John Steens
Exhibition Designer, Thinc Design
John is motivated by service to the community and he strongly believes that intentful design can enhance our experience in the physical world. John is passionate about illustration, sketching, and 3D design. He loves to customize footwear and street fashion with pop culture inspirations.
Eric Hoffman
Executive Producer, Thinc Design
As a producer, writer, and director, Eric has led production teams in more than 30 countries on five continents, producing film, television, exhibition, and digital media projects for clients including National Geographic, Discovery, Disney, Smithsonian Digital Studios, Google, Microsoft, Education Above All, the Gates Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, and many more. Eric's work has been recognized by the American Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Webby Awards, the Lumiere Awards, the CINE Golden Eagle Awards, the Banff Mountain Film Festival, and VR Fest.
Todd Schliemann
Partner, Ennead
Todd Schliemann’s award-winning portfolio is distinguished by buildings for educational, cultural, and civic institutions and recognized internationally for architectural innovation and excellence. In Todd’s work, the relationship between architecture and civic society is central: The highest ideal is to give expression to an institution’s mission through the integration of design, program, and public spaces. His designs transcend pure utility and style to explore the techniques and art of architecture and their potential for edifying and enriching the experience of our common culture. Todd’s work has set new paradigms in the world of museum design, from the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, to the New York Hall of Science, to the Natural History Museum of Utah.
Don Weinreich
Partner, Ennead
Don Weinreich is responsible for the office’s technology development, leading the implementation of new ways in which architectural computing can be incorporated into and advance the firm’s practice. He is a LEED Accredited Professional and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Some of his notable works include the Natural History Museum of Utah, the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, and the William H. Neukom Building at Stanford Law School.
Jarrett Pelletier
AIA, Ennead
Jarrett Pelletier has developed bespoke, high-performance designs for preeminent academic and cultural institutions at Ennead for the past 16 years. Jarrett’s design process is one of inclusion and engagement. He believes that architecture must reach beyond aesthetics to create spaces that enhance human interaction and wellness, build communities, and embody sustainable thinking. Some of his notable projects include: the Biological Science Building and Natural History Museum at the University of Michigan; the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact at the University of Oregon; and the Alta Community Center in Alta, Utah.
Marissa Sweig-Trigger
AIA, Ennead
With 20 years of professional experience, Marissa is highly proficient in facilitating communication among the team and the client during the programming, planning, and design phases of a project. She aids in the development of details in accordance with design objectives and helps to establish standards for technical documentation. Marissa places particular emphasis on a holistic view of the project delivery and design. Some of her museum projects include: the Jean & Ric Edelman Fossil Park Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York.
Al Krueger
AIA, ACHA, EDAC, Kahler Slater
For the past 30 years, Al has provided leadership in navigating complex, high-profile projects for the firm. As a Milwaukee-based business owner, he is heavily invested in the success and revitalization of downtown Milwaukee. For MPM’s future museum, Al serves as Principal-in-Charge, providing executive oversight as well as strong financial and leadership guidance. As CEO at Kahler Slater, Al directs the design firm’s vision, strategic plan, operations, and cultivates the firm’s nationally recognized culture. He is a champion for Kahler Slater’s community involvement and volunteerism initiatives, dedicated to finding ways to support diversity, equity, and equality in the communities we live, work, and serve.
Chris Ludwig
AIA, Kahler Slater
Chris is an award-winning Associate Principal and Senior Designer at Kahler Slater. A Milwaukee native, he is tremendously passionate about creating a positive impact on our city through his work and serves as a collaborator on the design of MPM’s Future Museum. He has applied his passion for art and design on Kahler Slater’s projects locally and nationally to serve both cultural and higher education institutions for nearly 20 years. As a lifelong learner, he continues to participate in various design and community-related efforts including with UW-Milwaukee’s School of Architecture & Urban Planning, serving as a guest lecturer and studio critic. Most recently, Chris was the lead designer for Milwaukee’s Bradley Symphony Center, the new home for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. His commitment to the design community and profession was recognized as Chris was awarded the prestigious National 2020 Young Architects Award from the American Institute of Architects. He currently serves on the board of the New State, the historic redevelopment project of the State Theater in Milwaukee.
Jennifer Buck
AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Kahler Slater
Known for her ability to responsibly drive projects while integrating creative solutions into the design, Jennifer Buck is an Associate Principal and experienced Project Manager at Kahler Slater. Jennifer’s role for the future museum includes detailed coordination with the Museum, design partner Ennead, engineers, and consultants. She provides a design-oriented management approach to keep the project on-schedule and on-budget. Before joining Kahler Slater, Jennifer worked several years with Minneapolis-based RSP Architects where she delivered complex projects such as Bayshore Mall’s recent redevelopment as well as various studies to the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Skip Holschbach
AIA, LEED AP, Kahler Slater
Skip is an Associate Principal at Kahler Slater and a talented Senior Project Architect specializing in cultural and civic, academic health sciences, and medical education spaces. Skip recently helped deliver the significant and complex historic restoration of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s Bradley Symphony Center. He is considered an expert in sustainable design strategies, including LEED certification, and is often sought out for his knowledge of design and building information management technology. His strong organizational skills, deep portfolio, and creative problem-solving abilities means he understands the nuances of constructability in the Milwaukee area. He works closely with the entire MPM Future Museum design and engineering team to ensure our design is functional, efficient, and delivers a great visitor experience.
Kurt Theune
General Manager, Mortenson
Kurt began his career with Mortenson nearly 20 years ago, during which he transitioned from project engineer to project executive to director of design phase management. As the current general manager of Mortenson’s Milwaukee office, he is responsible for the overall management of operations and personnel, development of new customer relationships, delivery of all construction services, and direct involvement with all customers. He has led some of Wisconsin’s most notable projects including the Harley-Davidson Museum, Columbia St. Mary’s Ozaukee Inpatient Expansion, Saint Claire’s Hospital, Acuity Corporate Headquarters Office Expansion, as well as the Advocate Aurora Medical Centers in Sheboygan and Mt. Pleasant. Kurt is a LEED Accredited Professional and holds a number of industry-related certifications.
Brian Tobiczyk
AIA, Market Executive, Mortenson
Widely experienced in architecture, real estate, and construction, Brian serves as the corporate market sector leader for Mortenson’s Wisconsin operations. With more than 20 years of experience in the industry, Brian excels at partnering with customers to deliver well thought-out solutions that address their current and future business needs. Recognized for his strong focus on relationships, Brian has extensive experience building consensus across business units and complex organizational structures. Brian’s project experience with private and public corporate customers includes Kohler Company, Milwaukee Tool, WEC Group, and Kohl's Corporation.
Kathleen Vanderstappen
LEED GA, Senior Design Phase Manager, Mortenson
As Senior Design Phase Manager, Kathleen is responsible for providing substantial input and leadership during the design phase of projects. She understands technical and planning attributes of facilities and coordinates design team members and preconstruction services including estimating, scheduling, project planning, constructability, and site utilization. Kathleen works closely with Mortenson’s in-house estimating, scheduling, and MEP teams to develop strong estimates, pricing strategies, and construction plans that set a project up for success before a shovel even hits the ground. She has worked with local customers including Uline, Froedtert Health, Kohler Company, and Advocate Aurora Health Care.
Scott Simpson
Estimating Manager, Mortenson
As Estimating Manager, Scott Simpson leads Mortenson’s dedicated in-house estimating team. He is responsible for the accuracy and completeness of Mortenson’s estimates and leads the assembly of a wide variety of estimates including cost models, schematics, budgets, and design development estimates. Scott serves as Mortenson’s national leader in target value delivery and providing conceptual estimating during the validation stage. He serves as the project team leader responsible for administrating our preconstruction tools, including project dashboards, weekly financial trending reports, and target value budgets. A Milwaukee native, Scott has led a number of complex projects for Wisconsin customers including Advocate Aurora Health Care, Froedtert Health, Milwaukee School of Engineering, Kohler Company, Uline, and UW Health.
David Malda
ASLA, LEED AP, Principal, GGN
David Malda is a key design leader at GGN. David’s emphasis on drawing and making throughout the design process is central to his role within the office, and he shares this knowledge in numerous studio reviews and student engagements throughout the year. David has presented at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, and published a related essay in the Harvard University Press book, River City, City Rivers. He has served as a panelist at the 2019 Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards CITIES: Detroit. He also co-founded a popular design drawing series at the University of Washington that began in 2016, and more recently he has co-led drawing workshops at the past two ASLA conventions. His equity work includes co-presenting Landscape as Relational Practice: Connecting People to and Through the Land at the 2021 LABASH conference at Cornell University.
Azzurra Cox
Associate, GGN
Azzurra Cox comes to landscape architecture by way of her love of cities and her commitment to public space. Azzurra is on the design team and leading the public engagement for the India Basin Shoreline Park project in San Francisco, CA. In addition to practice, she serves as Urban Design Commissioner on the Seattle Design Commission, reviewing all city capital improvement projects, and served one term on the inaugural Central Area Design Review Board. Her interdisciplinary background in social theory and the humanities informs her approach to the discipline, including her interest in the power of landscape to shape and reflect collective social narratives.
Ana Lopez
President, ALLCON LLC
An experienced professional with more than 25 years of experience, Ana serves as President of ALLCON LLC, a Hispanic, female-owned general contracting firm specializing in carpentry and electrical disciplines. Pursuing the opportunity of owning her own business in the construction industry, Ana Lopez developed and built ALLCON from its conception in 2009. The firm began as an electrical contractor and expanded one year later to include general contracting and carpentry services, giving ALLCON a unique blend of services few general and service contractors can match. Under Ana’s leadership, ALLCON has completed multiple projects for the State of Wisconsin, Department of the Army, United States Army Corps of Engineers, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Milwaukee Public Schools, and Milwaukee County among other entities.
Thinc Design is a leading design firm serving clients in North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, which will be working with the Milwaukee Public Museum. For more than 25 years, Thinc has designed projects for a wide range of museums, science centers, aquariums, zoos, theme parks, corporations, and governments, including Expo 2020 Dubai, the Seattle Aquarium, the Smithsonian Institution, the National September 11 Memorial Museum, and the California Academy of Sciences.
