Greg Simmons

Greg Simmons is a self-confessed, largely self-taught façade and wind engineering nerd. He founded Insol in 2003 and has been delivering bespoke façade screens for buildings around the world ever since. In 2019 he built WindLab — a one-of-a-kind, full-scale wind testing facility — to bring the kind of rigour normally reserved for primary structure to the screens, sunshades, and architectural features that sit on the outside of buildings. He contributed to the authoring of AWES-QAM-2-2024, the first global standard for full-scale wind testing of building envelope components and architectural features, covering aerodynamic behaviour, dynamic excitation, functionality, and wind noise. Insol's testing has supported projects from carpark cladding through to high-profile civic buildings — work where the consequences of in-service failure are unacceptable. The more beautiful the façade, the more there is to find before it goes up.