For more than ten years, New York City has promoted energy efficiency policies—including PlaNYC and the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan—that will radically reshape the education of architects toward energy performance in buildings, reduction of emissions, and the efficient use of resources. This series of undergraduate research studios conducted at Pratt Institute School of Architecture, investigates […]

In “Seven American Utopias”, Dolores Hayden traces examples of America’s preoccupation with experimental communities – from the Shakers in the late nineteenth century to Drop City in the late twentieth – that marry utopian social aspirations with pragmatic environmental organization. A common impulse in these experiments was the will to challenge the hegemony of the […]

Located along Eastern Promenade, Portland’s Eastern End Waterfront is a primary launch location for commercial and recreational watercraft. The peninsula shares the only public boat ramp in the city for motorized boats, alongside storage and launching for competitive rowing teams, kayaks and rental services. The City commissioned Collins Engineers in collaboration with Mitchell Rasor Landscape […]

What kinds of spaces do we need to exchange ideas in architectural culture? How can we better read and think together in an age where images and texts proliferate online? Using the Pratt School of Architecture as a laboratory in cooperation with the Director of Libraries, our team developed a programming and concept study for […]

Sited on a promontory in the Hollywood Hills, this house for a couple was formed by the competing desire for spaces that were both inwardly focused and capitalized on canonical views of Los Angeles’s geography. The sequence of movement through the 3,000 s.f residence is designed so one is always looking through a space that […]

This $20,000 award is being used as seed money to establish a research center – Architecture Center for Responsive Enclosures (ACRE) – to advance the design of sustainable building envelopes. Following the Bloomberg administration’s PlaNYC 2030 to substantially increase the energy performance of New York City’s buildings, our research targets innovative façade strategies that are […]

This ongoing research with Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) was introduced into an advanced studio at Pratt Institute School of Architecture, where innovative post-tensioned block screen wall systems were developed to weave a type of mechanical fabric. Students designed assemblies up to four stories tall as an over-cladding strategy for a generic office building using varying […]

Developed as research funded by a 2010-11 NYSCA Independent Projects Award and Pratt Faculty Development Grant, this work investigates the form finding and structural potentials of Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) as an integrated wall and vault assembly system. By utilizing traditional masonry corbelling techniques combined with prefabrication, an alternative AAC component logic is designed to […]

This project for a mini loft in Manhattan, was a gut renovation of 700 s.f space in a former warehouse. The owner wanted to maximize the openness of the space while still having discrete zones for different activities. She also requested as much storage space as possible. Because the loft had a high vaulted ceiling, […]

Castaway begins with the premise that the gesture to privatize the experience of the exterior world into the space of the domestic is a critical impulse in the formation of the suburban house. The escalating availability of information through television, the internet and printed media makes any place, time, and thing accessible without ever leaving […]