"Disaster Preparedness"

Dean Sakamoto, FAIA, is the Principal of Dean Sakamoto Architects and founder of the SHADE group (Sustainable Humanitarian Architecture Design for the Earth), based in Honolulu, Hawaii. Mr. Sakamoto is an educator and practicing architect with a national presence and diverse local expertise. As an educator, he served on the faculty of the Yale University School of Architecture and is currently a lecturer at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and associate affiliate faculty at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. His New Haven and Honolulu based firm, Dean Sakamoto Architects, is known for its environmentally sensitive and culturally specific designs. He is the architect of the Juliet Rice Wichman Botanical Research Center at the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kauai, Hawaii, a LEED Gold certified and hurricane resilient building and recipient of the 2010 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Honolulu Award of Excellence. Mr. Sakamoto currently serves on the AIA National Advisory Committee on Resilience and is the lead developer of HURRIPLAN: Resilient Building Design for Coastal Communities, a Federal Emergency Management Agency certified professional training program offered at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center for which I was able to participate in a two day seminar last year here in Honolulu.

Mr. Sakamoto earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Oregon, a master’s degree in architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and a master’s degree in environmental design from Yale University.

Dean is also a recent past member of our Honolulu Sunrise Rotary Club.

Please join me in welcoming Dean back to our Club as he shares with us his knowledge on disaster preparedness.