Donald Alywn Innis, (born in 1931 in Olean, New York), is an American architect based in San Diego, California. Innis is also an inventor and engineer and has pioneered the idea of floating real estate, specifically the notion of a floating airport using pneumatic stabilized platform (PSP) technology which he has developed and patented through his company, Float Incorporated. Innis designed several notable San Diego landmarks, including the 1970s remodeling of the San Diego Broadway Pier (one of the first pier designs to make use of significant above water landscaping and greenery), the master plan for the San Diego Embarcadero, and Terminal One of the San Diego International airport. He is a long-standing member of the American Institute of Architects.
Biography
Early life
Innis is the middle son of Greta Matson Innis (Swedish-American, b. 1905, d. 1965) and Alwyn Osman Innis (American, b. 1896, d. 1974). His father Alwyn was an American-born RCAF squadron leader during WWII and a young American foreign exchange fighter pilot ranked as a Second Lieutenant in the British RFC's No. 46 Squadron during the final years of World War I. Donald Innis' father, Alwyn Osman Innis, had trained at Canada's RFC camp at Bourden before being commissioned and sent to England. Innis' father returned to the U.S. when he left the RFC (then the RAF) in 1919 to become vice president and general manager of the Columbus Aviation Company. Innis' father, Alwyn, would work for the S.S. Kresge dime stores, opening and managing several all across the country, including in Olean, New York, where son Donald Innis was born in 1931. A.O. Innis would later move to Chicago, Illinois to open his own dimes stores, Alywn Stores, only to close them several years later to re-join the RCAF during World War II and moving the entire family to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. After WWII, the Innis family would move back to Chicago, Illinois, and then ultimately to San Diego, California.
Early career
Donald A. Innis attended the University of Illinois in Chicago for one year before becoming a salesman and taking part in the racing of midget cars for Four Wheels Inc. (a Chicago auto leasing firm). Innis would race midget and stock cars on the quarter-mile track at Soldier Field in downtown Chicago and would sell used cars for the company. Innis then moved to Tucson, where he briefly attended the University of Arizona.
Innis then worked for Chicago architect Maurice Webster, (b Sept. 20, 1892; d May 17, 1982, Evanston, IL.) who with architect Alfred P. Allen designed Chicago's Sky Harbor Airport, which had originally opened in 1929 just north of Chicago. Webster also designed Stronghold Castle, a replica of a European castle which was built by Walter Strong, then publisher of the Chicago Daily News. It is now a conference center owned by the local presbytery of the Presbyterian Church.
Innis later moved to California with his brother, artist, and writer Windsor. Innis worked his way up the ladder at Falkon Booth, becoming a draftsman and then drafting designer, when around 1956 he received notice that he had been drafted by the U. S. Army.
Innis had previously served seven and a half years in the Navy Reserve, beginning shortly after high school. Innis' was recruited by the U.S. Army Signal Corp's Alaska Communications System (ACS) and was stationed on an Army operated cable ship in Alaska. Innis oversaw the laying of thousands of miles of the first military submarine telephone communication cables across the ocean using secret military charts aboard the wooden-hulled self-propelled barge, the cable ship Col. Basil O. Lenoir. Innis' top secret job required him to enter a room "like Oz" and close curtains around him while he read the secret charts of where U.S. military communications cables would be laid at sea.
After serving in the Signal Corps, Innis obtained an early release and entered U.C. Berkeley's architecture program in 1958. While studying at Berkeley, Innis taught sailing at the U.C. Berkeley sailing club at Berkeley Yacht Harbor and often sailed with Hans Albert Einstein (son of physicist Albert Einstein), a professor of hydraulic engineering, who was teaching at the university at the time. Innis graduated from Cal in 1961.