Brent Bucknum : Director
Founder, Senior Designer, Lead Ecologist, Programs
Our Founder, Brent Bucknum provides many years of experience in restoration ecology and environmental policy and serves as the lead ecologist and senior designer for Urban Biofilter’s green infrastructure and biological systems projects.
Brent is also the Founder and Principal of the Oakland-based ecological engineering, research, and design firm, Hyphae Design Laboratory with whom Urban Biofilter shares an office and collaborates closely. Brent lives and works in the former Wetlands of West Oakland, California.
Before founding Hyphae iin 2008, Brent served as the design director at Rana Creek, an ecological restoration and design firm based in Carmel Valley, California. He helped launch the Living Architecture Department and served as its first Design Director. Previously, he worked for Greenfield International, a brownfield remediation company in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Brent’s expertise includes the design of institutional, municipal, commercial, and residential-scale green infrastructure projects, ranging from rainwater and greywater systems, to urban parks, creeks, greenbelts, brownfield remediation, green streets, low impact development, and green roofs.
He has designed and overseen the construction of over 30 green roofs in California alone and has consulted on greywater, rainwater and wastewater reuse policy for multiple agencies, water districts, and Environmental Health Departments from Mendocino to Los Angeles, as well as utilities including EBMUD and PG&E.
He has additionally developed innovative green infrastructure and sustainable stormwater and water reuse masterplans for large projects including a new 3000-unit residential community in Tustin, CA, a 500-unit affordable housing project for the San Bernardino Housing Authority, and the new Transbay Terminal in San Francisco.
Nick Robinson : Director
Operations, Communications, Development, Design
Nick provides overall coordination for the Urban Biofilter organization as well as project management for our biofiltration and bioremediation projects and is responsible for coordinating our media, communications, organizational development, and daily operations.
Nick’s coordination of our media production and communications includes the development and administration of the urbanbiofilter.org website, blog, and all corresponding social media sites as well as campaign-associated media and graphic design, press relations, and various policy, planning, and scientific research publications. He also coordinates our campaign outreach, inter-agency and inter-organization meetings, community collaboration, the production of project and organizational reports, as well as development activities including fundraising and donor/member outreach.
He collaborates on our biological systems design and implementation and provides plan drafting and compilation. He also currently manages our bioremediative horticulture facility, pilot project at the Port of West Oakland, and our volunteer/internship programs.
Nick brings years of experience as an environmental and social policy researcher, non-profit programs coordinator, and community organizer, working with community groups and organizations across California and the U.S. He has coordinated multiple outreach and organizing campaigns, building community-based solutions to environmental toxicity and social injustices, focussing extensively on research and organizing for the national and international anti-nuclear and environmental justice movements.
Collaborators
Nik Bertulis : Co-Founder, Natural Systems Design
Marisha Farnsworth : Co-Founder, Design, Rendering, Architecture
Kadi Franson : Design, Rendering, Architecture (Hyphae)
Eden Gallanter : GIS, Rendering
Robert Glass : Drafting, Rendering (Hyphae)
Eric Maundu : Aquaponics, Electronics (Kijani Grows)
Eric Olson, P.E. : Engineering (Hyphae)
Graham Preston : Design, Carpentry
Julia C. Schmitt : Engineering, Waste Management (Hyphae)
Gina Williams : Office Managment, Accounting (Hyphae)
Noel Yakubu : Bambusero, EPA Contractor
Urban Biofilter is fiscally sponsored as a project of The Earth Island Institute, a 501(c)3 organization