ARC 211 | Planetary Practice: Subjectivity of Control
Sites of post-militarization are shaped indelibly by both the devastation of war, and the more invisible forms of toxicity embedded for decades after in the soil, water, and air. The design studio employed architectural representation to interrogate these ongoing “occupied ecologies,” exposing coordinated, often unseen spatial violence that had made many landscapes uninhabitable and foreclosed futures.

Students selected post-militarized sites and, through drawing, analysis, and mapping, traced them from supply chains and testing grounds to storage, deployment, and depletion. Their work rendered legible the entanglements of militarism and ecology, proliferating toxicity, post-conflict aesthetics, environmental diplomacy, and the residues of violence. Together, we examine the planetary reach of U.S. military infrastructure, grounding the design project in readings, workshops, and iterative reviews. The studio culminated in a multimedia exhibition.

ARC 311 | Architecture as Witness
A seminar that surveyed research-based architectural practices centered on developing mediums of witnessing, formulating accountability, fostering solidarity, and imagining alternative futures. The course focused particularly on contexts overwhelmed by material extraction, militarism, and the exploitation of Indigenous lands. Students researched spatial design practices that centered on developing methods for activism and resistance against environmental and spatial violence. Through these research practices, we challenged the notion that research is neutral, recognizing that it was often shaped by biases and perspectives, which had the potential to either magnify or mute lived experiences. We asked: Could architecture act as a witness, bearing testimony to events, injustices, and transformations? This involved exploring how architectural spaces could document, reveal, and communicate experiences of violence and resistance. The course explored an understanding of architecture not just as a physical construct but as a medium capable of producing new forms of evidence and acting as a witness to societal and environmental violations. By engaging with methodologies such as field notes, listening, mapping and interviews, students probed the multifaceted modes of observation and analysis, culminating in a multi-medium research dossier.

ARC 211 | Planetary Practice: Confronting the Architecture of Occupied Ecology
Sites of post-militarization are shaped indelibly by both the devastation of war, and the more invisible forms of toxicity embedded for decades after in the soil, water, and air. The design studio employed architectural representation to interrogate these ongoing “occupied ecologies,” exposing coordinated, often unseen spatial violence that had made many landscapes uninhabitable and foreclosed futures.

Students selected post-militarized sites and, through drawing, analysis, and mapping, traced them from supply chains and testing grounds to storage, deployment, and depletion. Their work rendered legible the entanglements of militarism and ecology, proliferating toxicity, post-conflict aesthetics, environmental diplomacy, and the residues of violence. Together, we examine the planetary reach of U.S. military infrastructure, grounding the design project in readings, workshops, and iterative reviews. The studio culminated in a multimedia exhibition.

Architecture Studio IV
In the context of Eric Adams’s 2023 move to slash $36.2 million from New York’s library budget; this design studio used Roosevelt Island; once a carceral, quarantine, and urban-renewal testing ground, as a lens to examine libraries as vital social infrastructure. Confronting the island’s sanitized memorials and Four Freedoms rhetoric, students investigated incarceration, disease, ecology, renewal, borders, monuments, and geology. Through research seminars and design development, they re-imagined a 20,000-sq-ft multi-library complex: political, literature, music, and arts.

Data Mourning Studio: Co-taught with Marina Otero Verzier
Data Mourning, a clinic led by Marina Otero Verzier with Farah Alkhoury, analyzes Tuvalu's plans to become a fully virtual and digitized nation by transferring itself to the metaverse. The clinic critiqued the “cloud” metaphor, examining the vast network of data centers that accelerates the climate violence that threatens island nations. Through interdisciplinary student teams, it developed ethical, political, and ecological strategies through prototypes, archives, legal frameworks, and speculative fictions that cared for Tuvalu’s social, cultural, and environmental relations while imagining alternative futures for territories facing erasure. The project framed survival as collective care, protest, celebration, and mourning, not mere data storage.

MFA in Design | Publication and Display
is a studio survey of publication and display strategies for art and design practice. Students studied a wide range of models for presenting visual ideas, in print, on-screen, and in space, to understand the function, production, and aesthetic conventions for publication and display, addressing and challenging those conventions in creating their own exhibition. Reflecting on the infrastructure of cultural production, including museums, exhibitions, and biennials, this course challenge the conventional assumption that the cultural apparatus is confined within the bounds of its displays. Beyond what is readily observable, the politics and cultural dynamics of architectural spaces extend into the realms of intentionality and hidden complexities. By probing the act of placing artifacts on display, students inquire into the multifaceted modes of observation, the production of distinct perspectives, and the voices that are either magnified or muted.

Introduction to Architecture | Environment as Medium
This introductory architecture studio situates design within its entanglement with colonial violence, climate crisis, and environmental racism, insisting that built form always participates in geopolitical struggle. Focusing on West Harlem Piers Park, students traced how toxic infrastructures disproportionately follow BIPOC communities and how activist campaigns such as WE ACT’s 1997 gas-mask protest made that violence visible. Rather than asking the conventional “How do we create a sustainable building?”, the studio approached "Environment as a Medium", asking how architecture co-produces environmental transformations alongside animals, plants, fungi, minerals, bacteria, and entire ecosystems. Through research drawings, students mapped these agents and their entangled agencies, revealing hidden circulations of waste, energy, and breath. Each student then advanced a design argument; whether a space of protest, a parliament for negotiation, or a communicative installation.

MFA in Design | Publication and Display
is a studio survey of publication and display strategies for art and design practice. Students studied a wide range of models for presenting visual ideas, in print, on-screen, and in space, to understand the function, production, and aesthetic conventions for publication and display, addressing and challenging those conventions in creating their own exhibition. Reflecting on the infrastructure of cultural production, including museums, exhibitions, and biennials, this course challenge the conventional assumption that the cultural apparatus is confined within the bounds of its displays. Beyond what is readily observable, the politics and cultural dynamics of architectural spaces extend into the realms of intentionality and hidden complexities. By probing the act of placing artifacts on display, students inquire into the multifaceted modes of observation, the production of distinct perspectives, and the voices that are either magnified or muted.

Spring 22_Advanced Studio VI | Teaching Assistant for Professor Mark Wasiuta_Studio Title: Detox USA

Summer 22_Advanced Studio_Teaching Assistant for Professor Eric Bunge_Studio Title: Parallel UN