Emeryville City Council
February 21, 2023

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. During primary school and middle school at the University of Minnesota, Eugene Tssui, was part of an experiment in creativity and talent development initiated by educational psychologist, E. Paul Torrance, in the 1960's. Tssui attended Columbia University, the University of Oregon, and the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds an Interdisciplinary doctorate in architecture and education. He worked for the Organizing Committee of the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics and with the revolutionary American and German architects, Bruce Goff and Dr. Frei Otto. He opened his own California-based firm in 1990 and was asked to teach architecture and ecology at elite universities in China from 1999 to 2015, and at UC Berkeley. He is the author of seven international books on architecture, ecology, and behavioral change and over 100 international articles about his work. He has won grant awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation, and the American Institute of Architects. In 2013 he was given the title, "Guardian Angel of the Planet", sharing this title with Jane Goodall and Jean Michael Cousteau, conferred by Project Coyote, a national coalition of scientists and educators. He is a World and Senior Olympic level competitive athlete and is the Four-Time Gymnastics All-Around Champion in the Senior Olympics, an Eight-Time Amateur Boxing World Champion, and an Eight-Time US Presidential Sports Award winner conferred by US Presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He is also a music composer and his piano pieces have been performed in the USA and China. Dr. Tssui's interdisciplinary/anticipatory philosophy is a platform for his impetuous search for meaning, purpose, and excellence, in a multi-dimensional way of life. He has been featured on numerous television programs such as National Geographic, Discovery Channel, PBS, CNN, The McNeil/Lehrer Report, MTV Cribs, The Learning Channel, Disney Channel, CCTV China, EuroTV, NBC and others. He is married to sociologist/educator, Dr. Elisabeth P. Montgomery. They have three children and four grand-children, and reside in Emeryville and Mount Shasta, California and Shenzhen and Shanghai, China.