Joe Meppelink

Principal @Metalab, Llc

Houston, TX, US

Metalab is a multidisciplinary design firm and licensed architecture practice located in Houston, Texas. We work in three distinct genres: Architecture, Product Design, and Civic Art Project Management. We strive for elegant solutions to our client\'s challenges, enabled by technology and inspired by the relationships between these genres.The regional craftsmanship and capacity of Houston often informs our process as we understand that the hands can sometimes see solutions more clearly than the mind. And while our practice was founded on the use of advanced 3D modeling and fabrication technologies we\'ve always understood that craft and technology need each other, perhaps now more than ever.As Architects, we often work on old buildings, but we design and build in our own time, celebrating the common thread of quality as a lasting achievement. Our new structures are elegant and sometimes whimsical, sensing their place in a long continuum. We are particularly interested in Pavilions and Park Buildings, where quality and design intent can be enjoyed by everyone.As Product Designers, we design and invent to affect both the built environment and the environment at large as we focus our technological capacities on a broad range of assignments for clients ranging from start-ups, to municipalities, to fortune 500 companies.As Project Managers, we help artists to make their visions into reality, relying on an acute control and awareness of cost, schedule, and an engineering acumen that starts by proposing solutions to the myriad what-if\'s that come with artistic creation. We have become widely known for delivering complex civic art works on time and in budget, but equally important: we\'ve developed a keen sensitivity to working with artists and preserving their conceptual intent.

Rice University

Master of Architecture (M.Arch.), Architecture

University of Michigan

Bachelor of Architecture - BArch

Western Michigan University

Industrial and Product Design