Brett Bentson

Brett joined Utile in 2013. He was born and raised in San Francisco and studied architecture at Rice University in Houston, where he received the William Ward Watkin Traveling Fellowship, the school’s highest honor for graduating students. Brett has worked with a broad group of clients ranging from municipalities, to non-profit organizations, to institutions, to private developers.

In the public sector, Brett has led the expansion and complete renovation of two branches of the Boston Public Library in Jamaica Plain and Nubian Square as well as the planning of new branches in Uphams Corner, Chinatown and the South End. He also has worked closely with the Boston Center for Youth and Families for planning studies in Allston-Brighton, Charlestown, and Dorchester and is principal in charge of the first new construction community center in a generation in Boston’s Grove Hall neighborhood. Brett has worked with several non-profit clients on planning and construction projects, most recently Sportsmen’s Tennis and Enrichment Center, the first indoor non-profit tennis club built by and for the African American community.  For independent schools, Brett has managed master plans and building projects for diverse campuses in the Boston area, most recently a makerspace for Belmont Hill School.

In the private sector, Brett has managed residential and hospitality projects of many different scales. In Boston’s South End, he managed the 160-unit Girard apartment building and the Quinn and the Harris, a 14-story mixed use apartment and condo building. Brett led the renovation of the Beacon Hill Hotel, a boutique hotel in Boston’s most iconic neighborhood. Current work includes a 360-unit apartment development in Portsmouth, NH and a 400-unit apartment high-rise in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood. Brett also leads a number of Utile’s interior residential projects, working with national developers all across New England.

Prior to Utile, Brett worked on a variety of projects for institutional clients including Bennington College, Bowdoin College, Northeastern University, and the University of Massachusetts with a focus on student housing, having designed over 3,000 student beds and one million square feet. He has taught design studios at Northeastern University and served as a visiting critic at several Boston area architecture schools.