Faculty Updates
The firm of senior critic Emily Abruzzo, Abruzzo Bodziak Architects, has been recognized with two 2024 AIA Connecticut Design Awards. Stick House, Brick Garden, a town house in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, received a Merit Award in Residential Architecture, and Tasting Rooms, in Norwalk, Connecticut, a catering kitchen and dining space, received a Merit Award in Interior Architecture. Tasting Rooms was also featured in AN Interior and Architectural Record. Additionally Abruzzo was featured recently on the latter’s “DESIGN:ED” podcast.
Diana Balmori Assistant Professor Anthony Acciavatti was a fellow this past autumn at the American Academy in Rome, where he was working on the manuscript for his next book. He will continue writing and researching this spring as a Senior Fellow at the American Institute of Indian Studies, in New Delhi. In November Acciavatti delivered a keynote lecture and led a seminar at the Climate Congress, convened at the Lahore Biennale. He delivered lectures at ETH Zurich, the American Academy in Rome, Bartlett School of Architecture, and Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia. In 2024 he was appointed a trustee of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies.
Spring 2025 William Henry Bishop Visiting Professor and professor adjunct Sunil Bald was featured on a panel to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Architectural Record’s “Design Vanguard,” an annual list recognizing ten new architecture firms to watch. Bald’s own firm, studioSUMO, was included in 2006.
Norma Barbacci, a lecturer and principal of Norma Barbacci Preservation Consultants, is collaborating with the Cultural Heritage Finance Alliance Inc. (CHiFA) on the Ruta del Rio Grande, a regional initiative focused on cultural heritage conservation, research, and tourism in Cañada de Cuicatlán, Oaxaca, Mexico, supported by funding from the Mellon Foundation. She is organizing a training course on the conservation of concrete and terrazzo in Modern architecture, set to take place in Havana in 2025, in partnership with the College of Santa Clara in Old Havana. Barbacci is also working with Friends of Havana, Docomomo US, and Modernism Week to plan “Modernism in Havana Week,” a curated trip scheduled for 2025, alongside other preservation efforts in the city. Earlier she co-organized Hablemos de Arquitectura Moderna, an international conference and workshop highlighting Modern heritage in Havana, on March 11–13, 2024. She also participated as a speaker at the Management of Historic Cities international meeting, held in Havana from November 19 to 22, 2024.
Deborah Berke, Edward P. Bass Dean and J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture, is the recipient of the 2025 AIA Gold Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Institute of Architects. The award will be given at a ceremony at the 2025 AIA Conference on Architecture in Boston, to be held on June 6, 2025. Dean Berke’s firm, TenBerke, received an Excellence Award in Adaptive Reuse from AIA Connecticut for NXTHVN and an AIA Connecticut Excellence Award in Residential Architecture for the New Canaan Pavilion.
Phil Bernstein (BA ’79, MArch ’83), deputy dean and professor adjunct, has been on the artificial intelligence lecture circuit, giving talks on the topic to the AIA Large Firm Roundtable CIO group, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s leadership group, and Hart Howerton Architects and at Ball State University. He was interviewed in a practice roundtable for the Harvard Design Magazine’s latest issue, “Instruments of Service,” edited by Elizabeth Bowie Christoforetti and Jacob Reidel (MArch ’08). The Royal Institute of Architects will publish the second edition of his book Machine Learning: Architecture in the Era of Artificial Intelligence later this year.
Fall 2024 William Henry Bishop Visiting Professors Amélia Brandão Costa and Rodrigo da Costa Lima, of Architecture Matters, will host the next session of Porto Academy in Barcelona from July 14 to 21, 2025, at the La Salle School of Architecture. The annual program gathers students from a wide variety of academic and cultural backgrounds. (See the Fall 2024 issue of Constructs for more information on Porto Academy.)
Senior critic Brennan Buck’s essay “Zombie Perspective,” written with David Freeland, was published in Perspecta 56: “Not Found.” The essay examines the nature of contemporary images given that nearly all digital photographs taken today are instantaneously composited and post-processed by AI software before they appear on-screen. Their practice, FreelandBuck, completed a new ground-up home in northeast Los Angeles, as well as Down by the River, a 10-foot-tall light box in Gruene, Texas, in 2024. Their work was included in the exhibition Imagining Space in the 21st Century, at the A+D Museum, in Los Angeles. Their Los Angeles multifamily housing prototype received an honorable mention for AN’s 2024 Best of Design Awards. The prototype explores the architectural potential of recent legislation in California allowing housing with reduced parking requirements in commercial zones, creating a new “mini-tower” typology with between ten and forty units, exterior terraces and egress, and mass timber construction behind existing commercial structures in Los Angeles.
With the support of an Architecture + Design Independent Project grant from New York State Council on the Arts, critic Violette de la Selle (MArch ’14) and Wesley Hiatt (MArch ’16) curated the exhibition Keep the Change, which opened in January 2025 at Citygroup, in New York. Their article “Patterns of Change,” drawn from the eponymous 2023 exhibition at Citygroup, appears in AA Files 80.
In October professor emerita Peggy Deamer participated in conversations at the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota for the launch of The Organizer’s Guide to Architecture Education (Routledge), which she coauthored with six other educators: Kirsten Day, Andrea Deitz, Tessa Forde, Jessica Garcia Fritz, Palmyra Geraki (BA ’06, MArch ’10), and Valérie Lechêne. She also gave a keynote address at Turin Polytechnic and spent the month of November at the Tongji University, in Shanghai, lecturing on Western professional architectural associations and researching China’s design institutes. She and cowriters Victoria Beach and Tom Fisher have published six “Architects Talking Ethics” articles in the Architect’s Newspaper. “Construction as Plan,” coauthored with Albert Refiti, appeared in the book Curatorial Design: A Space Between, and her chapter “A Common: The Architecture Lobby” was published in The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space, and Politics, Volume 2.
Senior critic Kyle Dugdale (PhD ’15) published the article “Transfer of Power: A Calendar of Classical Contradictions from Trump to Biden” in a special issue of AR Journal focusing on architecture and irony. In October Dugdale joined Ana María Durán Calisto for a conversation with Spring 2020 Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor Cazú Zegers about her book Architecture in Poetic Territories at the Rizzoli Bookstore, in New York.
Ana María Durán Calisto, Daniel Rose (1951) Visiting Assistant Professor, authored the article “Young people are suffering from climate anxiety. Here’s how to help.” with Cristiana Baloescu, published in Yale Climate Connections. She joined Kyle Dugdale for a conversation with Spring 2020 Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor Cazú Zegers about her new monograph at the Rizzoli Bookstore in October 2024.
Anna Dyson, Hines Professor of Sustainable Architectural Design and director of Yale CEA, debuted the International Drought Resilience Observatory (IDRO) at UNCCD COP 16, in Riyadh. Dyson was a featured speaker at the symposium “Future Proofing New York: Planning for the New Normal,” hosted at AECOM New York on September 25, 2024, and served as a juror for the 2025 AIA New York Design Awards.
Associate dean Martin Finio’s firm, In Studio, received an American Architecture Award for Four Points House, a private residence in Connecticut. The firm’s Fort Greene Town House was featured in the AIA New York “ Interiors Residential Review,” a program that “showcases the best work in residential interior projects by New York City–based architects.” In Studio is currently wrapping up work on its latest project, a gut renovation and addition for a historically significant building on the Upper East Side—originally designed by Calvert Vaux for the Children’s Aid Society— to house a tutoring center and an associated nonprofit foundation. The design accommodates the foundation’s first headquarters, with areas for instruction and independent study as well as spaces for staff, tutors, and operations. The renovation allows for 40 tutoring offices, a boardroom, a cafeteria, and a philanthropic wing in the building and encloses the original second-floor terraces in glass, creating additional square-footage for the cafeteria and offices.
Critic Deborah Garcia has been named residency director at the Institute for Public Architecture, in New York.
Steven Harris Architects, the firm of professor in the practice Steven Harris, was named once again to Architectural Digest’s “AD100.” The office has completed new homes in New York, Connecticut, California, and Florida, including an apartment overlooking Central Park, a town house with pool in the West Village, and Harris’s own home in Palm Springs. Its Madison Avenue Apartment was featured in Galerie; the Bridgehampton Beach House was featured on platforms such as Dezeen and Local Project; and a video feature of the Palms Springs Residence appeared on Local Project. The firm’s Bedford Quarry House was awarded a Silver at the 2023 Brick in Architecture Awards.
Andrei Harwell (MArch ’06), senior critic and director of the Urban Design Workshop, was featured on the Urban Investment and Revitalization panel at the Connecticut Housing Conference on October 24, 2024. The Connecticut chapter of the American Planning Association recently recognized the Yale Urban Design Workshop with a Special Chapter Award.
The essay “El urbanismo de los cuidados,” by professor emerita Dolores Hayden, appeared in Arquitectura Viva, no. 270 (2024). Published in Spanish and English, it is a preface to the Spanish translation of Redesigning the American Dream (Barcelona: Reverte, 2024), which comments on state of American housing today. Hayden delivered the keynote “Domestic Revolutions Then and Now” at the international UNAM conference “Feminismo para la Transformación Urbana del Espacio y el Territorio,” on November 15, 2024.
Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor Kabage Karanja will serve on the jury for the 2025 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, which highlights architectural projects that have a significant positive impact on Islamic communities worldwide. He and his partner at Cave Bureau, Stella Mutegi, are part of the curatorial team for the British Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Lecturer Yoko Kawai organized the 2024–25 colloquium Mind and Space, which investigates important questions such as how our mind perceives space and whether our spaces can influence mental health. She also delivered the presentation “Transform Your Workspace, Transform Your Well-being” at the Yale Office of Sustainability on October 10, 2024.
Fall 2024 William B. and Charlotte Shepherd Davenport Visiting Professor Francis Kéré has designed a master plan and buildings dedicated to the cultural and spiritual heritage of the Ewé people in Notsé, Togo.
Lecturer Susana La Porta Drago delivered a lecture at the Bienal de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires, at the Faena Art Center, on Saturday, October 12.
Assistant professor Mae-Ling Lokko authored “Re-Fusing: On Heat Regimes and Material Circularity,” as part of the series “Material Acts,” published by Craft Contemporary and e-flux Architecture. She also participated in “Architecture + Science: Building Solutions for the Planet,” a Yale School of Architecture Panel on Regenerative Design and Construction at the Yale Club of New York, on Thursday, September 26, as part of Yale @ Climate Week. Lokko has been named one of Metropolis magazine’s design visionaries of 2024.
Critic Nicholas McDermott (MArch ’08) participated in a panel discussion on the work of the Design Advocates program, hosted by the Pratt Institute and Architectural League on September 30, 2024.
Critic Tess McNamara (MArch ’18, MEM ’18) was interviewed for the podcast “Meet the Visionaries,” hosted by MIT Center for Real Estate. The New York Times covered her research on carbon savings in office-to-residential conversions.
The firm of senior critic and Building Lab director Alan Organschi (MArch ’88), GOA Architecture, received an AIA Connecticut Excellence Award in the Architecture: Encompassing Art and the Commercial, Institutional, Educational, or Multi-family Residential Design (under 25,000sf) categories for their Starlight Park Facilities. Organschi organized the panel “Architecture + Science: Building Solutions for the Planet,” a Yale School of Architecture Panel on Regenerative Design and Construction at the Yale Club of New York, on Thursday, September 26, as part of Yale @ Climate Week.
In fall 2024 assistant dean and professor Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen (MED ’94) delivered several lectures in Europe and North America: a keynote at Sverre Fehn Centennial Symposium, at the Hedmar Museum in Hamar, Norway; a public talk on Eliel Saarinen at his Christ Church, in Minneapolis; a lecture on her new research project “Architecture and ‘the Crisis of Man’” at the Department of Art History at Toronto University; and a talk about her book Untimely Moderns: How Twentieth-Century Architecture Reimagined the Past, at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, in Toronto. In addition, she participated on two public panel discussions, about exhibiting architecture, at Helsinki Design Week; and about architectural research, at the University of Coimbra, in Portugal. Untimely Moderns was featured in the Fall 2024 book review roundup in Places Journal.
Mauricio Pezo Bravo and Sofía von Ellrichshausen, the Fall 2024 Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professors, are releasing the book Window Wall (Copenhagen: The Architecture Publisher B, 2024), on the intersection of painting and architecture in the work of their practice, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, based in Chile. Containing more than 1,000 handmade works, including paintings, sketches, and line drawings, the edition is a comprehensive alphabetical catalog of the studio’s 22 years of practice. The volume also includes an essay by the authors and an index with the artworks’ dates and techniques.
The exhibition Alexander Purves: Watercolors and Drawings, displaying sketches and paintings by professor emeritus Alec Purves (BA ’58, MArch ’65), was on view at Blue Mountain Gallery, in New York, October 1–26, 2024.
Elihu Rubin (BA ’99), who leads the undergraduate urban studies program, was appointed Henry Hart Rice Associate Professor as of July 1, 2025. Recently the New Haven Independent revisited Rubin’s 2002 documentary film on the New Haven Green, titled Convergence.
Assistant professor David Sadighian (BA ’07, MED ’10) was selected as a Whitney Humanities Center Fellow for the 2024–25 academic year. Beyond participating in the center’s interdisciplinary community of scholars, Sadighian also received a WHC Griswold Faculty Research Grant for travel related to his book manuscript in progress. He continues to develop this research by presenting at various conferences. During the Fall semester he gave talks at the Nineteenth- Century French Studies Colloquium, hosted by Duke University, and via Zoom as part of Claire Zimmerman’s “Costs of Architecture” international working group. Sadighian was also invited to publish a Spanish translation of his essay on the “ currency” of Beaux-Arts design expertise, forthcoming in 2025.
Lecturer Jen Shin (MArch ’20, MEM ’20) participated in “Architecture + Science: Building Solutions for the Planet,” a Yale School of Architecture Panel on Regenerative Design and Construction at the Yale Club of New York on Thursday, September 26, as part of Yale @ Climate Week.
