Donald Alywn Innis, (born in 1931 in Olean, New York), is an American architect based in San Diego, California.
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.
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.
After WWII, the Innis family would move back to Chicago, Illinois, and then ultimately to San Diego, California.
Innis had previously served seven and a half years in the Navy Reserve, beginning shortly after high school.
In 1961, Innis joined the San Diego–based architecture firm of Paderewski Mitchell and Dean, AIA, as chief designer.
"Pat" Paderewski, Innis was in charge of designing the current Terminal One at the San Diego Airport (constructed in 1967).
For more than three decades Innis-Tennebaum Architects specialized in military contracts and the building of elementary schools, residential, commercial and other architectural projects.
Noteworthy projects in and around San Diego included the original San Diego Embarcadero redesign and master plan (the bay front area and docks next to the San Diego Airport between Harbor Island and downtown San Diego), Del Mar's Flower Hill Mall (built in 1977 for the Fletcher family)[23] which included an underground restaurant, East Village Mall (Rancho Santa Fe), a total overhaul and remodeling of the historic Broadway Pier in the 1970s, adding new innovative structures (and preserving the view of the bay all the way down Broadway Street), The Harbor Seafood Mart at the Embarcadero, and the redesign of the Red Sails Inn on Shelter Island.
[24][25] Unfortunately in 2010, the Broadway Pier building that Innis designed was demolished and a less aesthetically appealing boxy, modern cruise ship terminal was erected in its place.
To achieve a platform large enough to operate an international airport (about 1,200 acres), the technology needed to be invented to float that kind of structure.
[26] The PSP technology Innis invented uses air movement to reduce wave loads and distribute them through the platform, a platform that could be used to house offshore airports, oil and gas production facilities, floating islands, military bases, and additional real estate for coastal cities.
[26] Although it has been tested and proven by the Navy, the idea has not yet found favor with short-sighted San Diego bureaucracy, although Innis and his associates at Float Inc. continue to pursue it.
The idea has recently gained more support in the scientific community, including by the man widely considered the dean of world ocean scientists, Dr. Walter Munk, who holds the Secretary of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations Chair at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.