Prattfolio Fall 2023

Pratt folio

Fall 2023

The Magazine of Pratt Institute

Housing/ Home

Cover Story

The Things We Call Home A Photo Series Examining the Revelations in Our Intimate Environments

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very photo in Kaytlin Bronson’s 2023 senior showcase at Pratt, titled Whittle, was made within Bronson’s Brooklyn home, among “a cocoon of familiar objects” that could sometimes comfort, sometimes overwhelm. Isolating specific elements of this personal environment—a cracked acrylic photo frame holding a cherished family photo, parted blackout curtains revealing a sliver of city block outside and, inside, the velvety texture of a blanket—within the space they occupy became a chance to consider deeper questions of being and belonging, the essence of home. In this Q&A with Prattfolio, Bronson sheds light on the process and discoveries behind the work.

For a long time, I developed photographs that were very abstract, to display my emotions and feelings, what I felt was going on in my psyche. For one photograph, I decided to take a step back—literally.

I was photographing an object on my desk, something that I’d made, and I was very close to it, to focus on the details. On the spot, I decided to step really far back to capture the entire object. The end image was of an object that I made, that I felt represented my insides, sitting on top of my desk in my room.

Seeing this photograph made me feel like a part of my internal being was spilling out onto my desk. It made me realize that I take up space in the tangible world, during a period of time when I felt like I only existed within myself. Eventually, this photograph would be the inspiration for the rest of the work for Whittle.

I hope the viewer takes away this feeling of discovering something that is finally being uncovered after being lost and hidden for a very long time.

What is the significance of home for you in your work?

All of the photographs for Whittle were taken within my home in Brooklyn. My bedroom has always been a cocoon of familiar objects that comfort me and that have traveled with me since childhood.

But I’ve also recognized that my space can become a cluttered cave that can make me feel trapped and isolated. The objects I am photographing I have either created or found within my own built environment. They represent me and parts of my body but also

Photographs from Whittle by Kaytlin Bronson, BFA Photography ’23

Tell us about how you began Whittle. What did the work reveal to you?

act as evidence of my existence within a space. I’ve always spent a significant amount of time within my room, so naturally it would become an outward projection of my ideas and thoughts.

What are some sensations or ideas that define “home”— and how do those feelings or concepts relate to the work you showcased in Whittle?

Whenever I envision home, I think about the items that are there, especially the ones that I’ve had since childhood. I can become very sentimental when it comes to ordinary objects that remind me of a certain memory or event. My work Whittle is a culmi­ nation of a year of psychoanalytic practice asking the question, how have I become the person I am today? This work made me take some time to digest everything within my space. It made me question why I cling to certain items and how those items can reflect parts of myself back to me.

How have your perceptions of home changed over time?

From a young age, home to me was wherever my mother was.

After losing my father, I grew very attached to her and was scared to leave home or her for long periods of time. I also found comfort and home in familiar objects that I would see on a daily basis; they gave me a sense of permanence and attachment.

As I grew older, I learned that where I was couldn’t be home forever. I needed to venture out and also find a community that would allow me to express myself freely. Now I know that home can be wherever I want it to be, as long as I can still find that feel­ ing of comfort and safety among the people and objects I surround myself with.

Cover Story

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Features

Departments

10 Passive House, Climate Action

3 In Conversation with the President

Architecture Professor In Cho Equips the Next Generation of Architects to Address Climate Change

16 Home Becoming

Cynthia Tobar, MSLIS ’08, on an art and documentary practice that shifts storytelling power to voices less often heard

In Pratt Alumnus and Professor Alex Schweder’s Performance Architecture Piece Islands, There Is No Perfect House

8 Study

22 Spaces for Us to Live

Students in the interdisciplinary elective Design for Aging and Beyond redesign homes for aging with care

Experts in Architecture and Development Examine Culture, Care, History, and Advocacy in Housing for Black Communities

32 Longing, Belonging, Memories, Dreams Four Pratt Alumni Artists on Painting Visions of Home

6 Perspective

40 News 43 New and Noteworthy 46 Class Notes 62 In Memoriam 64 Spotlight Ebb and Flow: a class and an exhibition explore the making of the objects we live with

Prattfolio, the magazine of Pratt Institute, is published

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Living Spaces F

Photo by Michael Tessier

rom my years teaching architecture, one studio in par­ ticular stays with me to this day. It focused on a concept for a multiunit living space that crossed generations and family makeups with the flexibility to accommodate inhabitants’ changing needs and relationships through their lives. As someone for whom home means community, it was an amazing opportunity to rethink housing with my students. The class prompted them to disrupt convention, opening doors to imagination and innovation, and moreover, the project encouraged them to deeply consider how we live, over time, in relation to our work, and in society with others.

Today at Pratt, new dimensions to this kind of exploration are unfolding. Amid a national housing shortage and affordability crisis that impacts urban and rural communities alike, we add to those considerations how we make our spaces within a rapidly shifting ecosystem, among a multiplicity of species, designing for envi­ ronmental and social justice and equity, with the complex dynamics of New York City as the context for our examinations and work across the Institute.

In our School of Architecture, the question How do we live together and share the built environment? is at the center of a provocation, Cohabitations, which this year is bringing together housing-related work from the four departments. At the start of the fall semester, I sat down with School of Architecture Dean Quilian Riano to discuss housing, as a means to address a basic human need but also a space to think about care, community, and understanding of our place in the world.

—President Frances Bronet President Frances Bronet: The subject Cohabitations is fascinating—it brings up a class I used to teach, in the first year, second term. The project was “variable-commitment housing.” The central question was, How do you design for residents of a multiunit building, of different ages, occupations, family structures, to allow for their commitment to how they live in the space to shift, based on fluctuations in their lives and relationships? While they weren’t going to fully resolve this problem, the students came up with amazing proposals that made them rethink how people live together, and to consider the fact that our lives are not static, and that we don’t know who we’re going to be 15 years from now.

Dean Quilian Riano: Housing is one of my favorite topics to teach in design studios—and I’m excited to hear that, in your case, it was introduced so early on—because it forces students to confront what exactly a house is, questioning every aspect of everyday life. Thinking about housing is a tangible way to wrestle with big issues of social justice, equity, and environ­ ment, and reimagine the relationship between labor and living. It’s a mix of the theoretical and the radically pragmatic.

I find the housing model interesting because it’s something that we all have experience with. When I was going through architecture school, a lot of the programs were a museum, a ballet, these larger performance spaces, and you may or may not have had experience with the content in those spaces. But everyone lives somewhere, everyone has a family structure, and societal and other structures are reflected in that. So you have a place to begin.

In the context of design education, in which we encourage students to take every new program, every new exercise, as an opportunity for experimenta­ tion, you can bring that experience—we all sleep somewhere, we all eat some­ where, we all share somewhere—and then start to wonder.

For example, we look at precedent studies, like what is happening now with senior housing in Japan, that we can learn from, in terms of sharing spaces, sharing structures, creating new sets of communities, that can be applied anywhere.

So, that’s one of my favorite things about housing. It starts with the lived experience and the body, because you know what it’s like to live in spaces, and it begins to put that experience in a context, especially when it’s a multiunit housing structure that you’re designing. What does the unit mean? How does it aggregate? What does it mean to then turn it into a building that potentially has extra spaces for sharing, or for the unanticipated? And then how does that fit within a larger community?

In Conversation with the President

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FB: I grew up in affordable housing, where everything met minimum standards, the windows were of easily manufactured dimension, bath­ rooms were five by seven, ceilings at eight feet. And I spent almost no time inside of that space. I was always on the street or at a local Y-spon­ sored “Neighborhood House” (the street was not that hospitable in Montreal winters). So for me, housing is the community. With housing, you also think about the space beyond the inside and how we develop relationships and other layers of engagement with the world.

I think about Hull House in Chicago, designed at the turn of the last century. It was a social settlement, committed to the community. It was a residence, a research entity, and a vehicle for social reform. That would’ve been a great thing for someone like me. You have a chance to retreat into your own space, but you also have a place to be with others, responsible to the neighborhood. In many cases, we’ve stripped that away. So there are these great models. What are the other models?

QR: I’m also fascinated by the fact that [professional and trade] unions have built co-op housing and other models in New York City.

Another, historical, example I’m fascinated by is Finntown, where Finnish immigrants in Sunset Park created a series of cooperative housing and business models. So, there might be models from our past that can help us create new ones for the future.

FB: Also, our students are coming from different kinds of living arrangements. How can we take wherever they’re coming from and use their histories and experiences as valuable contributions?

Now, in the US, we’re grappling with the cost of housing. One issue is we’ve made the rules around housing so demanding—windows have to be a certain size, you can’t live in certain basements. (Though the Pratt Center is doing incredible work in that area.) We’ve actually made sure that people can’t have housing, because the restrictions are so demanding. What do we have to rethink so that people do have the appropriate accommodations? We’ve eliminated a certain kind of richness in the spectrum of possibilities.

Composite drawing of a proposed housing community within the Farragut Houses NYCHA campus in Downtown Brooklyn, by Atemis Zhang and Xier Zhu, both MArch ’24, from the fall 2022 LoLux Design Studio, taught by Jonas Coersmeier, GAUD Adjunct Associate Professor (CCE). The studio developed models for integrated low-income–luxury housing and public space in New York City, examining the socioeconomic and political factors that impact urban housing and architecture’s role in creating a more just society.

Prattfolio

QR: We began talking specifically about design—but the policy part is so important. Housing reflects society; it reflects our societal goals.

In the School of Architecture [SoA], all the departments, all the programs, have something they can do around the issue of housing, whether it’s the community planning or the policy, the real estate planning and management, or the design of buildings, landscapes, and public space—these built-environment elements come together in a cohesive way.

Working with NYCHA on public housing, with the community in Red Hook and Farragut Houses, we are thinking about some of the issues you’re talking about around equity and the challenges of public housing at this moment. In the undergraduate and graduate departments, there are studios looking at how we build onto these developments, how we think about the landscapes, how we bring in more programs. Some of this can be inspired by what’s happening in Europe, where on the outskirts of the major cities, the kind of tower-in-the-park housing has been renovated.

In planning, we’ve been working with groups in the Lower East Side to think about how to remove fences, how to bring life back into some of the landscapes there. Our Pratt SoA Real Estate Practice program is looking at how to use systems to create more affordable housing for more people, even while questioning what “affordable” as a policy statement means.

There is another set of inquiries from faculty who have been looking at the issue of suburban housing. What does it mean to build new, with the environmental concerns, and how can we reimagine existing housing? That actually links to Governors Island, which has become a space to experiment, using the houses there, and the potential to add other structures, as a way to think about adapting for the climate crisis that our region is going to face. [Editor’s note: Pratt occupies Nolan Park Building 14 and is also a core partner in Governors Island’s future New York Climate Exchange.]

Fall 2023

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FB: And as you’re saying, this extends beyond the city. It brings to mind Michael Pyatok, BArch ’66, who has done significant work in affordable housing for low-income households (and his book, Good Neighbors, is an important resource in this space). His work touches on density in relation to urban developments and single-family dwellings, occupied by extended families and friends, and how we build communities in all of these settings.

How do we build in a way that accommodates multiple cohorts to live?

I think there’s something to looking at the sort of fantasies of how we want to live together, or not together, and then when those ideas break down, why didn’t they work? I think about housing in America that we did ultimately take down, Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, for example, and Cabrini-Green in Chicago.

One of the great things about housing, and houses, is we have so many examples. There are so many proposals that we can look at inter­ nationally and over time, whether it’s Incan housing or from the Global North, how people respond to climate conditions, as well as the need to actually be close to certain things and people in order to survive.

QR: In Arizona, for example, there is urgency to those issues, as seen in the high heat that Phoenix experienced during this summer’s heat wave record of 31 days with temperatures over 110 degrees. Maybe there are new typologies that are necessary to be able to create that experience that you described of life happening outside the house.

All of a sudden, housing has to respond to this major moment that is only growing.

As another example, I want to mention StuyTown, which is seen as middle-class housing, but right now has an interesting mix of senior housing, NYU dorms, and apartments with a lot of families with children. Because of the focus on maintenance, there’s not much of a difference between [the buildings]. The hidden aspect of StuyTown that I think also makes it thrive is its landscape. Every building has an entrance on two floors, which makes the landscape constantly undulate and create differences between the buildings.

It’s not a perfect model—MetLife [the original developer] forbade any public uses within it because they wanted it to be seen as private.

So there’s no school, no post office, but there are other things. As you probably know, it was sold in the largest residential real estate deal ever. And [the new ownership] began to add things to reflect that dorm-like quality. There’s a coworking space, there’s a cafe. There’s a place where people can do yoga and another place where kids do shows. So there is some of that community infrastructure, though it is a less diverse place than most of the surrounding areas.

FB: Care becomes so important, and issues around maintenance.

That people feel cared for collectively.

So, in terms of a pedagogical tool, housing cuts across everything.

It cuts across scale—you can do a single unit, an apartment building, a neighborhood. It can be distributed, it can be very dense. It cuts across materials. It cuts across issues of community and the infra­ structure needed to support it; it generates empathy.

QR: In our housing studios, students are putting almost everything that we’re teaching them into practice. We invite experts in different fields and structures and mechanical systems to come and work with them. So that’s how important it is in our pedagogy.

Again, it really shows the best of what we hope our students will gain from this education. Housing is shaped by our society and the way people live, but it can also shape those things, and when they understand that relationship, that is the moment where I have seen students “get it,” you know, fully realize the potential of design and policy.

In Conversation with the President

Winner of the School of Architecture NYC Housing Prize, this project by Valeria Bardi Cohen and Mariana Bravo, both BArch ’23, focused on housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, for single mothers and single grandparents caring for grandchildren, proposing a network of shared spaces, light-filled corridors, and mixed environmental experiences that blend the indoor and outdoor. It was developed in the third-year comprehensive studio Collective Assemblies/ Post-familial Domesticities taught by Eunjeong Seong, Adjunct Associate Professor (CCE) of Undergraduate Architecture.

A design by Daniel Hsu, BArch ’23, for the studio Energy Collectives: Towards a Resilient Workforce Housing Model, taught by Professor of Undergraduate Architecture Lawrence Blough and Simone Giostra, which asked students to imagine a self-sustaining live/work community on the periphery of Houston, Texas, sharing resources such as food production, solar energy, and water management.

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Perspective

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graduate of Pratt’s Library and Information Science program, Cynthia Tobar bridges her expertise as an archivist and oral historian with her work as an artistactivist, all with the aim of amplifying underrepresented stories—in her words, “stories of community care and power in housing justice, higher education, and labor justice . . . that resist inequality and the economic divide imposed on our communities.”

In her recent documentary short film, Mujeres Atrevidas (Bold Women), produced with support from the Pratt Center for Community Development’s Taconic Fellowship program, Tobar presents an intimate glimpse into the professional and personal lives of a group of Brooklyn-based women fighting for better working conditions.

As workers in app-based delivery, cleaning, and construction, they come together through their involvement with the Workers Justice Project, a center that advocates and organizes for improved workplace conditions and offers educational resources for workers as well as a safe space to build agency and community.

In a Q&A with Prattfolio, Tobar shared background on the film and her oral history practice, and offered advice

Prattfolio

Cynthia Tobar, MSLIS ’08 On an art and documentary practice that shifts storytelling power to voices less often heard

for emerging artist-activists. This is an edited excerpt of that exchange.

What drew you to the women of the Workers Justice Project as story participants?

CYNTHIA TOBAR: I was drawn to these women because their stories resonated with my background as a first-generation daughter of Ecua­ dorian immigrants who also began as low-wage workers in the city.

During the pandemic, as delivery workers were suddenly visible and celebrated for the risks they took and the services they performed in the media and the public, large segments of low-wage, delivery workers were nevertheless left unprotected and excluded from emergency-relief policies. The subsequent shutdown exposed how dependent many of us had become to living in a digital economy that relies on “invisible labor,” . . . and the public is further disconnected from the injustices that this workforce is experiencing. After observing female-identified workers in this community being underrepre­ sented in media narratives during this time, I wondered how this group was dealing with this disturbing trend.

Fall 2023

Coincidentally, I also began to no­tice the growing intensity of the Workers Justice Project’s campaign work to increase awareness of these issues online, and their fight for a living standard wage for these work­ ers by allying with [the labor group] Los Deliveristas. It was also inspiring to see all this activity take shape at a women-led worker center!

It was with this mindset that I wanted to do justice for each of these women by providing a space for them to speak about the challenges they face in their work. I am so grateful to the Pratt Center for their support of this work! Thanks to this funding, I set out to engage with the community within Workers Justice Project. I was able to establish a working relationship with them and interview several of their members.

The more I sat with them, the more I realized that I also had to focus on the friendships, sense of community, and empowerment these women identify as their sources of strength in their organizing. Essentially, these women are the heroes of their own lives.

My hope is that [the film] will paint a more representative picture of these women’s impact on the labor move­ ment in Brooklyn.

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What made documentary film an ideal medium for bringing light to this story?

This page and opposite: Stills from Mujeres Atrevidas. Opposite, bottom right: Cynthia Tobar, by Janelle Gonzalez for Martin Bentsen Studio. Stills and photo courtesy of the artist

CT: Documentary filmmaking, which I view as an extension of my oral history practice, allows me to broaden public awareness of this topic as well as the impact Workers Justice Proj­ ect’s advocacy has on these workers’ empowerment.

How do you see your information and library science/archives background informing your practices as an artist, oral historian, and filmmaker—to name some of the roles you embodied to make Mujeres Atrevidas?

CT: I encountered library and archival work during a crucial turning point in my life, when I was shifting from working as a public school teacher back in my old childhood neighbor­ hood of Jackson Heights in Queens.

While I was ready to move on beyond my experience working in public schools, I wasn’t as ready to give up on the public service, outreach, and community-building aspects that I relished as a teacher. Librarianship proved to be a perfect blend of public service and education, and I found the librarian’s role in facilitating a patron’s sense of agency in knowledge creation—with them coming into library spaces seeking knowledge on their own terms—profoundly liberating. This new occupation also aligned with my core activist leanings and allowed me to continue work on my own projects that examines and challenges power dynamics in social justice movements, but now from a different angle: the documentarian’s perspective.

While you were a student at Pratt, did you take advantage of any particular resources or opportunities that have helped orient you in your work?

CT: Beginning my studies at Pratt, I was able to plug into a service learning opportunity interning at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which thrilled me to no end! It was while working there and taking archives coursework at Pratt that I was introduced to oral history as a docu­ mentary practice, and I began to delve deeper in my newfound calling. I also began to question and use a critical lens to analyze power relationships in archival practice, challenging the traditional nature of archives and the

principles underlying their custody and management. I wanted to be a part of the new social reckoning I was witnessing in the archival field. By applying community-based and par­ ticipatory approaches in archiving, I believe archives can center the stories and experiences of communities excluded in dominant narratives of history. Archives can function as a site of resistance and solidarity.

In this sense, I entered the archival field determined to use inclusive archiving as my approach and use oral history as my method. I wanted to be part of a documentation and archival process that was non-elitist, transparent, and accessible to the community. Oral history does that— it creates a shared space where folks can gather, learn and thrive—just by listening.

able to take what I learned document­ ing activist stories of everyday people demonstrating the strength of their convictions and apply this as my “scholarly” focus in my research and artmaking. Refuse to take a myopic approach toward your particular interests. You’d be surprised what is possible if you experiment and open yourself up to the various approaches you can take as you work your way to making sense of the world. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to resonate with you.

Read the full story at pratt.edu/prattfolio/cynthia-tobar.

What advice would you offer for people in the early stages of building or evolving their careers, like students at Pratt, who are looking to develop practices that bridge art making, activism, and scholarship?

CT: My advice, for what it’s worth, is to follow your passion. Mine was being

Perspective

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Study

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Redesigning Homes for Aging with Care Design for Aging and Beyond, an Interdisciplinary Elective with Students of Interior Design and Architecture

s people grow older and many experience drastic changes to their lives from mobility issues and diseases like dementia, they are challenged to live in spaces that were not designed for aging. In the spring 2023 elective class Design for Aging and Beyond, led by Visiting Associate Professor Yutaka Takiura, Pratt Insti­ tute interior design and architecture graduate and undergraduate students researched and proposed design solu­ tions for this population.

Considering quality of life, daily needs, and the importance of com­ munity, the students created projects that emphasize holistic approaches to frequently complex problems. Their ideas range from adapting kitchens and living rooms to be more accessi­ ble and responsive, to reimagining whole blocks of homes as a combina­ tion of public and private spaces.

“I wanted students to become aware of issues and possibilities—oppor­ tunities in many ways,” Takiura says.

“My teaching strategy was to avoid lecturing. I asked students to research,

experience, and think while design­ ing. When we design for the most challenging area, it will be easier for other areas. So when we focus on the aging population, it will naturally expand to accessibility design. This is why I called the class ‘Design for Aging and Beyond.’ The students gained all the skills and techniques; now it is time to try applying to the subject they care about.”

At a May 18 event organized by the AIA New York Design for Aging Committee, the students presented their work both in person and virtual­ ly. Several students were inspired by their own family members, such as Changxin (Chang) Li, BArch ’23, who envisioned a kitchen renovation with directional rails and audio prompts for her grandmother, who has a vi­ sual impairment and a need to reach items without assistance.

The Memory House project by Yanya (Mia) Mei, MFA Interior Design ’23, involves a wall-based interactive system with guides like lighting, sound, and patterns

Prattfolio

Fall 2023

responding to the daily routines of her grandfather, who has Alzhei­ mer’s disease.

“I was most impressed by the discussion in this class on empathy.

I feel that it is important for design­ ers to empathize with the actual users,” Mei says. “My project is for my grandfather’s current home and uses daily circulation patterns, lighting, and sound effects as guides. It creates a playful daily reminder system to help him and other family members live harmo­ niously in the space.”

The students highlighted how interior spaces could be easily transformed for a better quality of life. Byoungwook (Brian) Kim, MFA Interior Design ’23, used guiding lines to improve visual perception of different rooms. Yuqing (Yuki) Lei, MFA Interior Design ’23, incorpo­ rated prefabricated panel systems that make things like refrigerators, televisions, and washing machines all part of a wall unit, to reduce collisions and increase accessibility.

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Opposite: Old Village Activation Plan by Yanyu Yang, MFA Interior Design ’24. This page, top to bottom: Lines for Aging by Byoungwook Kim, MFA Interior Design ’23, image by Yanya Mei, MFA Interior Design ’23; Memory at Home: Intergenerational Living for Older Adults with Dementia by Sophie McCartney, BFA Interior Design ’23; A-ma’s Magic Kitchen by Changxin Li, BArch ’23.

“East Asia, particularly Korea, is transitioning into a hyper-aged society, following in Japan’s foot­ steps,” Kim says. “Consequently, active research is being conducted on designing housing for the elderly and aging population. Given that facilities such as hospitals and re­ sorts are likely to form a significant part of my practice, I do not doubt that the knowledge gained from this course will lay a solid foundation for my future growth.”

Others took a broader look at how whole places could be designed to support communities of aging people and their families and caregivers.

Yanyu Yang, MFA Interior Design ’24, examined a rural village in the Inner Mongolia province of North China that has a large population of aging people and created an “activation plan” concentrating on renovations of existing structures that would enhance circulation, add ramps and handrails, and expand living spaces for gatherings.

Sophie McCartney, BFA Interior Design ’23, investigated intergenera­ tional living for people with demen­ tia by bringing together several single-family homes around a large backyard. Residents would be able to move through both private and shared spaces, giving people with dementia agency and independence in a safe environment while bringing together their families and live-in caregivers, a design that recognizes, as McCartney says, “the collective support of this community.”

Design for Aging and Beyond clarified for students the challeng­ es of memory loss, mobility, and accessibility for the aging population and everyone around them. Wheth­ er through large-scale concepts or smaller changes to the spaces of daily life, they identified creative solutions through technology, design, and con­ sideration for their communities.

This story was adapted from an article on Pratt’s news page. Read the full story at pratt.edu/news.

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Passive House Climate Action Prattfolio

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Architecture professor In Cho brings her expertise in energy-efficient design to equip the next generation of architects to address climate change.

By Joann Plockova

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s a practice, New York-based architec­ ture studio ChoShields has always been interested in environmental and social sustainability. But it wasn’t until found­ ing principal In Cho, visiting assistant professor in the undergraduate architec­ ture program at Pratt, became concerned about mold prevention in an extensive renovation project the studio was working on that she landed on what she describes today as their “North Star.”

“As I was doing research, I came across Passive House,” says Cho. “Once I started understanding what Passive House was about, I realized it had so many other critical benefits besides just mold prevention.”

Developed by Dr. Wolfgang Feist in the late 20th century, Passive House is a set of five guiding principles for design and construction that not only provides remarkable in­ terior comfort and indoor health, but also has the ability to drastically reduce energy use, by up to 90 percent.

Originally created to be used for residences, today it is used for all types of buildings. Able to heat and cool our homes and other structures with minimal energy use, this sustainable building method, which offers environmental, social, and economic resiliency, helps to reduce green­ house gas emissions produced by the use of fossil fuels, and therefore plays a critical role in the climate solution.

“Our built environment is a huge culprit in the climate crisis,” says Cho, who notes that it is responsible for 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally, and up to 70 percent in dense urban areas like New York City.

“So we don’t have the luxury to ignore it.”

Compelled by this sense of urgency, Cho has made it her mission to empower everyone from professionals to

kindergartners with Passive House knowledge. First effecting change through policy, Cho was part of a successful initiative to update New York City residen­ tial and commercial building codes to make them more stringent. Then she had a light-bulb moment. Cho realized that if she and her team provided the knowledge to actually comply with these policies, they could drive change on a much larger scale. Together with founding partner Timothy Shields, Cho formed Passive House for Everyone, the nonprofit, education-focused arm of their studio through which they aim to spread knowledge of this highly energy-efficient building science to the up-and-coming changemakers.

“Youth today are so passionate about wanting to address the climate crisis, but they don’t always have the tools to know how to address it,” Cho says. “They are the next generation of industry leaders and they are inheriting this crisis.”

Combining creative arts with hands-on learning, Cho has brought her unique pedagogical approach to teach­ ing Passive House to Pratt students. Over the course of the spring 2023 semester, a group of fourth-year archi­ tecture students in her advanced design studio not only learned in-depth the five basic principles of Passive House (air tightness, robust continuous insulation, high-performance windows and doors, thermal bridge– free design, and ventilation with heat recovery) but also put their knowledge into action through a project called the Pratt Brooklyn Ice Box Challenge: the first-ever US collegiate design-build rendition of the international Ice Box Challenge.

The scientific architectural experiment, first held in Brussels, Belgium, in 2007, and typically done by profes­ sionals, invites participants to design two structures, one

built to local energy codes and the other to international Passive House standards. A half-ton block of ice is placed inside each of the structures, which are installed together outside, exposed to the sun, on a carefully chosen site.

At the end of a specific period—in the Pratt team’s case, one week—both ice blocks are weighed to see which was left the most intact.

Opening spread: Photo by Todd Midler. Above: In Cho (right) works with fourth-year architecture students in her Passive House studio; photo

by Rachel Elkind. Below and opposite, clockwise from top left:Jeremias Emestica, BArch ’24, presents work. The Ice Box Challenge weigh-in; photo by Todd Midler. A rendering of the Ice Box Challenge structures installed. Cho with Tyler Haas, BArch ’24. A model of Passive House structures for the challenge. Students assemble an Ice Box Challenge structure on Pratt's Brooklyn campus. Studio photos by Rachel Elkind

“As a student, this experience has been something com­ pletely unique and new,” says Maxwell Wolfe, BArch ’24, a student in Cho’s Passive House studio. “Being able to do not only the typical drawings and conceptual thinking, but actually building. Just combining all those skills with new skills.”

The idea of the public demonstration aspect of the experiment is to spread awareness about Passive House as a tangible solution to the climate crisis.

“Passive House at a basic level is the best way to address energy use in buildings, to minimize it, and to there­ fore address the climate challenges that we have,” says Shields. “We have to give the next generation concrete ways to take on these challenges, and knowing that there are a basic set of principles that you can use to really change the world, gives them, even just mentally, the tools to understand that the world can be changed.”

Before digging into the design-build, students started off the semester embracing Cho’s conceptual, creative arts approach to teaching. They created collages, developed spoken word poetry, and choreographed body-movement explorations to learn the five Passive House principles.

“We asked ourselves, how can we share this knowledge in a way that becomes fun and engaging? So that when students leave our classes they’ll always remember the concepts, because they have a certain personal relation­ ship to them,” Cho says. “When they go through these exercises, they get to fine-tune the nuances of these

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concepts, to get to a point of real accuracy, which you need, once you get into the architecture.” The students then split into pairs to develop individual design concepts for the ice boxes, before coming back together as a studio following feedback from a guest jury. Together, they synthesized the elements of their projects that worked best, from the simplicity of the forms to the idea of a second skin that can be customized for context, into the two final 8 x 8 x 8 wood-based structures, each with its own window (triple pane for the Passive House) so curious viewers could peek inside.

and the huge administrative part of it, because organi­ zation was such a key aspect.”

Putting into practice the materials and methods of highperformance building construction lessons they learned from various industry and trade professionals over the course of the semester—including Sto-Corp, 475 HighPerformance, and Rockwool, who also sponsored the project through donations, along with Klearwall, Passive House Network, Square Indigo, and a number of other industry supporters—the students built and assembled the full-scale structures with their own hands.

“This studio wasn’t just about Pratt architecture students learning about Passive House, they’re also learning to be industry leaders, to be able to inspire others, to be social agents of change,” says Cho, “even before they graduate from Pratt.”

“For a lot of us, this was the first time doing a one-to-one scale project,” says Jeremias Emestica, BArch ’24, “as was the experience and learning what it takes to do that— from material takeoffs, construction docs, fabrication,

Not only did this build represent a first for a US college campus, but the students’ colorful renditions, one green, one red, both with playful graphics, marked the first-ever modular Ice Box Challenge design. The idea was to make transport and reuse easier so they could pass on the project to other schools and they too could learn about energy-conscious building through this tiny, but very tangible, means.

This sentiment was shared among Pratt faculty at the Ice Box Challenge reveal on May 8, where, together with the Passive House studio students and Cho, they gathered with Pratt community members, industry leaders, city government officials, and local Brooklyn school groups on a sun-drenched afternoon on the Brooklyn campus to witness the results and speak to the importance and the urgency of the matter this project addressed.

Passive House, Climate Action

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“These structures are a testament to how we need to start building in our future,” said Stephen Slaughter, chair of undergraduate architecture at Pratt. “Teaching the next generation of [architects] what these principles [in sus­ tainability] are so they can go into their own practice or into the firms they’re hired in and be an advocate for this is very important.”

Dean of the School of Architecture Quilian Riano agreed and also spoke to the history of teaching and practicing sustainability at Pratt through “environmental pioneers” like late Pratt faculty member William Katavolos and alumnus Edward Mazria, BArch ’62, founder of Archi­ tecture 2030, a nonprofit dedicated to finding climate solutions through the built environment.

Summer Sandoval, policy advisor, clean energy and eq­ uity, in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, and an alumna of Pratt, MS Sus­

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tainable Environmental Systems ’19, touched on the Ice Box Challenge as an effective means to share the benefits of high-performance buildings.

“This challenge is an amazing example of how we can be thinking about the most pressing challenges differently in a very creative way,” Sandoval said. “This really brings to life solutions that people can see, and that people can feel.”

With its block of ice weighing in at 900 pounds, compared to the 737 pounds of the structure built to local energy codes, the Passive House build was the clear winner.

“Now that I know Passive House as a technique, I am much more inclined to use it,” says Emestica. “I’ve been looking at some of my previous projects and thinking about how I can incorporate Passive House design techniques into those projects.”

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One example Emestica gave was a housing project, which he said it would be quite simple to apply the principles to be­ cause “creating sustainable and comfortable housing is one of the building typologies that Passive House was designed for.” Another is for a mixed-use restaurant and community center project. “For this space, I know the kitchen and the eating area have a huge ventilation requirement, but the other spaces—the classrooms, the gym—they can be built to more typical Passive House strategies. The kitchens below could have their own dedicated ventilation supply zone, and the top is built to a more conventional Passive House mechanical approach.” He adds, “I just think it’s really important to know that Passive House is an option.”

For Cho, who says for ChoShields, this highly energyefficient build­ing performance standard is a guiding light for every project—“there is simply no other way to build for us anymore”—it’s always about sharing the knowledge as widely as possible and teaching others how to do the same.

Beyond Pratt, her goal is to make teaching Passive House a regular part of the curriculum in architecture and design schools across the nation and internationally.

“Teaching our youth is among the best ways to lay the groundwork for a sustainable future, and educational insti­ tutions have the great­est opportunity and privilege to create this cultural shift of climate action that needs to happen in our society,” Cho says, “so that eve­ry­one, from all walks of life, is empowered with the knowledge to universally advocate for an environmentally and socially equitable world where we can all enjoy the places we live, work, and come together in our communities.”

Above: The Ice Box Challenge structures await the reveal. Right: Spreading the Passive House love: The structures were adorned with tags made during the student-led build.

Photos by Rachel Elkind

Participating students: Kelsey Delahunt, Jeremias Emestica, Khushali Jain, Tyler Haas, Yuxin Li, Emerald Liang, Shruti Sridhar, Vivian-Weiwei Sun, Angie Widjaja, Maxwell Wolfe, all BArch ’24

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HOME BECOMING In Islands, a durational work of performance architecture cocreated by Alex Schweder, BArch ’93, Professor (CCE) of Industrial and Interior Design, there is no perfect house.

By Clinton Krute

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Last day of Islands Islands,, photo by Dai Dai Hsieh

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A

s an artist, Alex Schweder—who was trained as an architect and has taught in Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture and Industrial Design and Interior Design programs for more than a decade—is not interested in design as a means of predetermining experience, rather, his “performance architecture,” as Schweder calls his practice, revels in the indeterminate possibilities that emerge from interactions between spaces and subjects. Projects like 2014’s In Orbit, in which Schweder and his partner Ward Shelley lived for 10 days on either side of a giant wheel, or the monumental ReActor (2016), in which the duo dwelled together in a slowly rotating Philip Johnson–like glass house, destabilize our common understanding of com­ munal environments, particularly those tightly-shared spaces we call home.

Schweder and Shelley’s latest performance, Islands, wrapped up in mid-July of this year and completes a trilogy

Home Becoming

begun by 2017’s The Newcomers and 2019’s Slow Teleport.

In this series, the two artists set themselves the task of travers­ing, over the course of 10 days, a large public space, constructing—and deconstructing—bridges and shelters as they live from day to day, all without touching the ground. Commissioned for the opening of the New Taipei City Art Museum, Islands introduced a twist: every few days, a resident of the peripatetic structure would be replaced. And so, as Schweder explained, the knowledge gained from experience would move not only through the open field surrounding the museum, but through time as well, from generation to generation.

I spoke with Schweder over Zoom, shortly after Islands was completed, about his interest in architecture and design as tools of social inquiry, how audience interac­ tions—including consistent questions about the presence of a bathroom in his projects—influence and redirect his own, fluid understanding of his work, and more.

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CLINTON KRUTE Could you talk a little bit about the impetus behind Islands? How did this project come about?

ALEX SCHWEDER Curator Kun-ying Lin learned of our performance Slow Teleport during a lecture I gave in Taipei in 2019. When he was asked to commission artworks for the opening of the New Taipei City Art Museum, he recalled my mention of continuous construction as a performance and thought it would be well suited for this event. My partner Ward [Shelley] and I said that we were happy to do something in that vein but that it would have to be specific to the context.

So we went through our regular process of coming up with different ideas until we no longer knew who authored the final version, which is how we know we’re on the right path.

Ward Shelley, photo by Dai Dai Hsieh

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With Islands, Ward and I had been interested in involving younger people in our performances as a way of cultivating a next generation of thinkers— not that we want them to duplicate what we do, but we think engaging them is part of an experience of passing something along that will hopefully change in their hands. Islands is very much about that.

In this case, we set up these five islands, or ele­ vated platforms, in an open field near the museum.

Each island is about 6 x 7 meters, and has a different wooden structure or framework on top to be used as the basis for a shelter.

It was 95 degrees and 95 percent humidity, and it rained every day. But it was also a very wonderful experience. Most of the time was spent managing the wind. It’s a lot like being on a boat, where you are needing to navigate elements and navigate the people you’re with.

I wanted to ask about the social element of your work, the way design can influence the way people interact.

AS Design methodologies usually measure the success of outcomes based on the fidelity of the end result to what was imagined in the beginning. With perfor­ mance, that line is much less direct. You can’t say, “We’re going to build something and it’s going to make people feel this way.” When I teach, I always want to help my students back away from claims like these. The performance architecture that I prac­ tice is meant to open up possibilities for subjectivity, rather than enact something that’s direct and linear.

It creates circumstances out of which you don’t know what’s going to emerge. That, for me, is what is exciting about the way personhood and affect emerges through design, and through architecture in particular.

In the case of Islands, we were really interested in the way knowledge might be passed on through oral histories. Ward and I worked with two Pratt stu­ dents, Hsiao-Chien Hung and Sean Lin [both MID ’24], whose roles as research assistants encompassed everything from materials research to translation to participation in the performance itself. [Editor’s note: Funding from the Pratt Institute School of Design Dean’s Office supported Hung and Lin’s parti­ cipation as research assistants in the project.] We both started this performance with Hsiao-Chien, and then I left four days after we started, and Sean joined. Then Hsiao-Chien left and another artist joined. Then Ward left and another artist joined.

Neither Ward nor I finished the piece. We ultimately left the participants, with two islands unexplored, to figure it out for themselves, without us dictating what they would do.

We depended on Sean’s and Hsiao-Chien’s fluency in Mandarin to have the conversations with our audience that are an essential part of the way we discover our work’s meaning. We always talk to people. It’s not the kind of performance where an audience is expected to just watch silently. We want the audience to engage us with their ideas and questions.

CK

CK AS

Did you teach the new arrivals what you’d learned during your time on Islands?

Yeah. The new person would work with the people who had been there and we would pass on what

Home Becoming

works and what doesn’t. Coming full circle, we found meaning in the idea that we needed to build a better house—and what better meant was really subjective.

The urge to build a better house changed based on the group—there is no “better house” that exists out there as a Platonic ideal, right? Each island had, la­ tent within it, the potential for various better houses.

Your work is such a potent metaphor for living with people, and speaks very directly to our ideas about home.

AS We see home as a kind of script. The activities of domesticity are super familiar, to the point that they are tacitly habituated. So our performance script is always: Just live your life at home. Try to go about your day. Because that’s so familiar to everybody, it allows our audiences to understand what we’re doing immediately. We don’t do anything different­ ly except in our adaptation to the physical environ­ ment, which breaks the habit of the home. But the script is the same.

CK

CK AS

What kind of questions do people ask and what does that interaction do for you as a performer?

What that interaction allows is a different perspec­ tive. We don’t step outside of our performance envi­ ronments and look back in. We need others to help us determine the meaning of the artwork through dialogue that negotiates what we think we’re doing, what they think we’re doing. Somehow, in between those two positions is what’s actually going on. For Islands, as well as our other projects, we relied on our audience for that kind of reflective moment. An answer we give one day might change the next, be­ cause we’ve had this conversation the previous day that has changed our mind about what we’re doing.

Everyone asks, no matter what country we are in, “Where is the bathroom?” We thought originally it was just people trying to be funny, but over time we thought of this question as asking, “Can we trust you?” If there’s actually a bathroom, it means you’re not getting down. It means you’re invested. Once the audience sees that, they have an easier time investing themselves.

CK AS

Do you document those conversations at all?

No, they’re oral histories. We want them to remain a non-authoritative, ephemeral, and fleeting thing.

CK AS

But they influence the work, like the weather.

Yes. These works are not made to accomplish some­ thing discrete. Instead, out of each project, new ideas emerge. But I can’t say yet what new works will emerge from Islands. It’s too soon.

Islands performers, in order of arrival: Alex Schweder, Ward Shelley, 洪筱茜 Hung Hsiao-Chien, 林子翔 Lin Tzu-Hsiang, 徐莘 Hsin Shyu, 蔡承翰 Eric Tsai, 雷雅涵 Theresa Lei, 王甯 Ning Wang. Producer: Foison Arts Opening spread photos, clockwise from left: Cloud roof, photo by Alex Schweder; Sean Lin ’24, by Dai Dai Hsieh; Alex Schweder, Ward Shelley, and Hsiao-Chien Hung ’24 on the first day of Islands, by Ting-Chun Yeh; Shelley and Lin, by Dai Dai Hsieh; Shelley and Lin, by Hsin-Che Lee; Shelley, by Alex Schweder; Islands at night, by Aren Chan

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FOR US TO LIVE

SPACES Experts in Architecture and Development Examine Culture, Care, History, and Advocacy in Housing for Black Communities

“Housing is a right. Not a privilege.”

Opposite, top, left to right: Rodney Leon ’92; Gary Bates; Pascale Sablan ’06; Andrew Thompson ’91; Malik Yoba. Bottom left: Leon. Bottom right: Sablan.

Photos by Katie Kwok, BArch ’23

“We’ve been trying to find ways to make communities more financially savvy and resilient . . .to be partners in the development process.”

“I’d like to propose a step change, from housing to living: housing as an architectural construct to living as a social framework.”

“It’s about having the space to commune . . . not being confined to the places we’re housed, but having spaces for us to live.”

These ideas—from architects Andrew Thompson, BArch ’91; Rodney Leon, BArch ’92; Gary Bates; and Pascale Sablan, BArch ’06, respectively—carried the conversation at Black Live(s) & Black Space(s): Care, Community: Housing, an event held earlier this year at Pratt Institute, which hosted Black architects and developers for a discussion centered on the discriminatory housing policies that have had detrimental effects on the lives of Black Americans and the transformational work these leaders are doing in the housing space.

As School of Architecture Dean Quilian Riano noted in his opening remarks, the February 23 event was spurred by a conversation between him, Thompson, and Chair of Undergraduate Architecture Stephen Slaughter. During a discussion of the history of NOMAS (the student arm of NOMA, the National Organization of Minority Archi­ tects) at Pratt, Riano, Slaughter, and Thompson identified housing as a shared interest among a number of Black alumni of Pratt.

Black Live(s) & Black Space(s): Care, Community: Housing was one of the first events of Pratt’s Design Equity initiative, supported by Pratt Presents. The Design Equity

initiative comprises a provocative series of discussions and events dedicated to shaping a sustainable and just future in New York City and beyond. The series highlights the ways in which Pratt’s faculty and alumni bring their creative education and community-first approach to spark change and create a more just and sustainable tomorrow.

Here are highlights from the event, with discussions of work that spans spaces dedicated to commemorating Black life and history, such as the African Burial Ground National Monument, designed by Leon, to spaces for living, like the in-progress (at the time of the event) mixed-use development Bronx Point, which is among Sablan’s projects.

Quotes have been edited and condensed. View a recording of the event at talks.pratt.edu.

PRESERVING ROOTS Andrew Thompson, BArch ’91, who has also been a faculty member in the School of Architecture, and whose past work includes projects with Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and CUNY, is cur­ rently county architect of Passaic County, New Jersey, working on historic restorations and infrastruc­ ture improvements. He presented on housing that made an impression on him from a young age, growing up in Brooklyn, and how that precedent, including the Nehemiah housing project in Brownsville, could shape what comes next.

Homes for Families In his presentation, Thompson shared that his family emigrated from Belize, when it was known as British Hondu­ ras, a colony of Britain. They first lived in an apartment in Crown Heights, but his grandfather, intent on estab­ lishing a home, moved the family to East Flatbush, Brooklyn. Thompson spoke about his family home and the neighborhood that he said meant a lot to him, and like a lot of Brooklyn, showed “the fabric” of a community.

“I grew up in a two-family unit built in 1950, and the neighborhood consisted mainly of two-family and three-family homes. All the homes had rear parking in the garage . . . you

Overview of Nehemiah homes. Photo by Gilbert Santana

didn’t have a lot of on-street parking.

All the children played in the yard in the back. We never played in the street. So most of us didn’t know the street until we were a lot older. It was a unique experience, but there are pockets—if you go around Brooklyn to East Flatbush and parts of Canar­ sie, you will see this type of housing unit still around today.”

Community-Led Development Thompson also witnessed changes from where his home sat on the bor­ der of East Flatbush and Brownsville.

On one side, he saw “development,

family homes, flourishment, and then we saw devastation, things going down.”

“One thing that really stuck with me was the Nehemiah housing proj­ ect. It was named by Reverend J. Youngblood after Nehemiah, who helped rebuild Jerusalem. It was city-owned vacant land. This is a unique project because it wasn’t a city effort, it was only the city vacant land that was available. Local churches, community organizers, and some officials of the City of New York went to build affordable hous­ ing without federal assistance. . . . It was built, and it still flourishes today.

They had parking for the cars in the front yards, they had a rear yard. . . .

Every house had its own personality.

When it was first built, there was one monotype one-family home but [each home gained] character when folks moved in and made it their own.”

Questions for the Future

Nehemiah homes gained character over the years as residents gave them personal touches. Photo by Gilbert Santana

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“So, where are we going today after Nehemiah? Why don’t we see more Nehemiah-type projects today in the City of New York? What we see is—I’ve got to put it out there—we see this [shows a glass-and-brick building of a dozen or so stories abutting older brownstone buildings]. This is a neighborhood in Crown Heights, and we have a historic structure there, and then we see these buildings going up, and they’re labeled by the devel­ opers as ‘luxury rentals.’ It sends a message to the community. Where’s our community going with this?

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We could build housing just like Ne­ hemiah did. We could build housing for people in the community, but how do we make it affordable, make it for everyone?

“I’m going to end on this slide: Housing is a right. Not a privilege.

Everybody has a right to fair housing, has a right to housing that they could bring their families up in, just as my family had when they came here to raise us right. And I think we need to think on that and dwell on that.”

HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS Rodney Leon, BArch ’92, whose work includes The Ark of Return, the United Nations memorial dedicated to victims of slavery, and the African Burial Ground National Monument, both in Manhattan, has also worked on housing initiatives with faithbased institutions in the city. A link between these projects emerged as Leon walked through his journey in housing, which, he said, “came through an understanding of the cultural history and cultural fabric of African Americans and our role in establishing a presence here in New York City from early on.”

Land and Settlement, Dislocation and Displacement Leon showed a map showing 29 land grants established by the Dutch after they colonized Lenape land known then as Manahatta, “given to African people who were given a conditional free status under the Dutch. This area was known back then as the Land of the Blacks”—a region comprising present-day Greenwich Village, parts of SoHo, the area around Washington Square Park, and Little Italy.

“What I want to indicate is that people of African descent have been a part of the building and the fabric of New York from its inception, even prior to the establishment of New Amsterdam.

“As the Dutch began to establish themselves in New Amsterdam, there was a major war that was fought between the Dutch and the native Lenape people. The people of African descent were granted this land to act as a kind of buffer between the devel­ opment of New Amsterdam, which

The Ark of Return at the UN headquarters, dedicated to victims of slavery, designed by Rodney Leon. Rodney Leon Architects

was in the southern tip of Manhattan, and the Lenape settlements, which were to the north of the Land of the Blacks.

“After the English took over New Amsterdam from the Dutch, a lot of the freedoms that were established, that the black people enjoyed in their settlements in that part of Manhat­ tan, were taken away, and a series of what they call ‘black codes’ were es­ tablished. One of the main ones was that people of African descent could no longer bury their dead within the boundaries of the city. The formal city around that time, the early part of the 19th century, was south of Chambers Street.

“You went from the Land of the Blacks—the settlement that was established, culture that was estab­ lished, families established, own­ ership established—to the change in control of the Lenape land to the hands of the English, and then to another dislocation happening, to the point of not even being able to bury your dead in the confines of the city.

“It wasn’t until much later, maybe two centuries later that the building of these larger towers, the excava­ tions of those foundations, uncov­ ered the remains, the bodies, of the people that were buried there [just north of Chambers Street]. This particular site where the [African Burial Ground] memorial is located is just a fraction of the actual site itself. It’s a quarter-acre site at the

Spaces for Us to Live

corner of Duane, between Broadway and Foley Square. But the scale of the burial ground is actually about four acres.

“The transatlantic slave trade itself, obviously, is the major point and tragedy, an event that began this point of dislocation. Through the United Nations monument to the transatlantic slave trade and to human trafficking, contemporary slavery, and the [African Burial Ground] memorial, the idea is, how do we begin to reclaim this history, these hidden histories? How do we begin to heal these kinds of conditions and claim cultural spaces, public spaces, as part of a process of reclamation, as communities of color, and also how do we—not just communities of color, but everybody—begin to take responsibility for that history and see ourselves as a collective community, a collective identity.”

Fragmentation and Cohesion “Dislocation, this idea of this pulling apart, the fragmentation, the trans­ formation of culture, the dispersal of culture, is a theme that, through cul­ tural spaces, through sacred spaces, and through spaces for communities to live and thrive, you can design to express. . . . Nevertheless, there’s a tension, things are still being held together; culture has been fragment­ ed and dispersed but nevertheless, it

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FURTHER RESOURCES At the event Q&A, panelists and participants shared a number of resources for architects, real estate developers, and construction managers working to make changes in the housing sector and beyond.

Apex Building Group is a Black-owned

construction management company that bids on and oversees construction projects in the New York area and works to achieve racial equity in the real estate funding pipeline. apexbuilds.com

GPI Win helps minority-owned businesses bid for and win building contracts from federal, state, and local governments. gpiwin.com

@IMPACCTBrooklyn is a community-

based organization that advocates for “quality education, good jobs, and safe, affordable housing.” impacctbrooklyn.org

@NOMAnational provides resources and

advocates for minority architects, helping to close racial disparities in job access and funding. noma.net

Real Estate Executive Council provides

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Photos by Katie Kwok, BArch ’23

resources and networking opportunities for Black and Latinx people working in the real estate industry. reec.org

maintains itself and it still finds a way to voice itself.

“We began to, in our practice, also acknowledge the significance and the importance of the church and other sacred spaces as a glue that holds, particularly, African Ameri­ can communities together, but also many immigrant communities in the United States. But specifically the role of the church as a communal space, [as it] starts to become also a political organizing space, a space where social services and other things can happen.

“Our practice has been working with faith-based institutions that are often aging, with infrastructure that is old and crumbling, [but that don’t have] the capacity, financially or otherwise, to be able to take on the needs to renovate and to update

themselves and make themselves financially resilient, in order to fight back against development pressures. . . . So we’ve been trying to find ways to make these communities more financially savvy and more resilient, and to create opportunities for these communities to begin to either develop affordable housing for them­ selves, or partner in joint venture with developers that are like minded, so that they can then become not victims of gentrification, but part­ ners in the development process.”

Leon showed a church, on 16th Street in Manhattan, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, now home to a primarily French-speaking West African and Caribbean congregation.

“The community wanted to keep the church no matter what, even if it was falling down. So we had to figure out

The African Burial Ground Memorial, designed by Rodney Leon (left).

Leon’s practice has been working with faith-based institutions to help communities, like that of the French Evangelical Church on 16th Street in Manhattan (below), gain resiliency.

Rodney Leon Architects

a way to see if they could do that, but at the same time, raise the millions of dollars they needed in order for them to stay in place and to renovate the church. So we established a joint venture relationship with a develop­ er. They [the church] are 15 percent owners of the development. The church was restored to its original condition with new infrastructure, mechanical systems, lighting sys­ tems. But they were able to maintain the existing church.

“This idea of maintaining longterm resiliency both economically and spiritually is part of the strate­ gies that we’re working on to combat some of the things that we’re talking about.”

HOUSING VS. LIVING Architect Gary Bates, cofounder of SPACEGROUP, recently returned to the US after 30 years in Europe, and has been teaching at a number of universities in and around New York City, where affordable housing for people of color is a major topic of conversation. Bates framed the issue that has arisen for him in the housing space: “The problem that I have with housing in general—I do a lot of housing myself—is that it’s this race to the bottom, how cheaply can we build? I know that building cheaper means that it’s as much going to empower someone else as it is going to empower the people that it’s actually intended for.”

Shifting the Conversation “I’m not really interested in talking about affordable housing. I want to have a conversation about affordable living.” Bates presented a site his students were working on last year, in the Bronx neighborhood of Mott Haven, that illustrated his point.

“For me, living and housing are two different things. How do we want to live versus how do we want to be contained or housed? We know how to build, we know how to build cheaply, we’re on top of what new materials are coming up. We know how to reduce our material use. We know how to decarbonize. And there are technicians who are strategically masterful at reducing every square centimeter, millimeter of cost. And I’m not going into the negotiations

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A site in Baltimore (center, L-shaped lot at Hollins Street between S. Stockton and S. Carey) that Bates discussed. “In some areas, there’s 90 percent blight, ours is probably around 70 percent . . . I had never seen anything like it. And then I started to look into the history of redlining in the city . . .This is how we approach looking at a site to try to understand what we’re actually dealing with and how we can give agency back.”

Google Earth

of property. [We looked at this site,] and I said, well, to be honest with you, from my point of view, it’s not a livable site.

“I’d like to propose a step change, from housing to living, specifically, housing as an architectural construct to living as a social framework. How can we reposition the conversation about living, not based on maximum ROI but on social equity, fairness, community, contingency, and family?

In these contentious times, all the more evident during the COVID pan­ demic, not unlike the social instabil­ ity of 1991, a time of racial reckoning and climate colonialism, I see living as a new spatial agency and a new possibility for architecture.”

tions of transience and displace­ ment were brought to the forefront . . . and the elderly became further insecure. Houselessness was and is still on the rise. These issues are further exacerbated as the pandem­ ic recedes and economic inflation ensues, forcing more populations into a state of deferred domesticity.

With the accumulation of injustices in minority communities, including economic and environmental ineq­ uity as well as a massive divestment

in cultural capital, the middle class continues to wither. Intergenerational housing has shown the potential to provide restorative framework for social and economic growth and stability.

“What is really affordable? This is something really important to me.

In this conversation about afford­ ability that keeps coming up: Is en­ ergy affordable? Is reuse affordable?

Is water affordable? Are food and food co-ops affordable? Is childcare affordable? Is elder care affordable, is care in general affordable? Is mobility affordable? When I think about paying rent, I still have to pay my electric bill, I still have to pay my food bill, I still have to pay for a number of different things. It increases my personal stress. So can architects expand their agency to look at that stress? How can build­ ings generate economy, how can we look at care and the cost of care and what that means, and intergenera­ tional housing obviously links into that conversation.”

ARCHITECTS AS ADVOCATES Pascale Sablan, BArch ’06, associate principal at Adjaye Associates and president of NOMA, has made advo­ cacy an integral part of her career as an architect. Founder of Beyond the

Spaces for Generations “We have a condition that I think ev­ eryone is familiar with. I don’t think it’s a United States condition; I think it’s an international condition: the aging population, which to me poses such an interesting opportunity and possibility—the possibility of inter­ generational housing. It’s always been a part of our culture. It will always be a part of our culture. It’s a part of care; when we talk about care, care trans­ lates into intergenerational housing.

It’s an inclusive, supportive, nonsegregational approach to housing not based on family or extended fami­ ly but on community and sharing.

“When the COVID-19 pandemic swept through New York City, ques­

A site in the South Bronx neighborhood of Mott Haven, the triangle below the 138 St-Grand Concourse station tags, bordered by two highways and the Harlem River.

“From my point of view, it’s not a livable site,” Bates said, noting pollution from the Major Deegan Expressway, highway onramps and offramps, and train traffic as well as the site’s susceptibility to flooding. Google Earth

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Rendering of the Cleveland Foundation headquarters. Among the design considerations Sablan highlighted was the architecture of the ground floor, “pulling through the community” and transitioning between public transportation and Hough, a Black community in Cleveland. S9 Architecture and VOCON

Built Environment, an organization that addresses inequities in architec­ ture and amplifies the work of diverse designers, Sablan has spearheaded initiatives such as the Great Diverse Designers Library (beyondthebuilt .com/great-designer-library-state) and Say It Loud, which highlights the work of NOMA mem­bers. Sablan presented on how architects can embed community care, advocacy, and environmental justice into their practice, using recent projects such as 888 Boylston and Bronx Point as examples of those efforts in action.

Turning Harm to Help “Advocacy is not just about the way we practice, it’s about how architec­ ture shows up for us . . . so I want to talk about how architecture spe­ cifically has been harming. In the work that I’ve been doing in advo­ cacy and through NOMA, it’s been a conversation about how we inspire the next generation of marginalized communities and kids to be excited about architecture—but in actuality, we’re the villains, because when [the community deals with] an environ­

ment that’s decrepit, or falling apart, and then they deal with the scaffold­ ing, the detours, the rodents, and the noise at all hours of the day and night, the project that is revealed afterwards is rarely for that commu­ nity. It’s actually a signifier that their culture is being erased, that they’re not allowed to be in those spaces, that soon affordability in those spaces will not be possible. So this is not a misconception of us in society, but an accurate depiction of the re­ lationship that we have fostered as a profession in not serving the people that we’re here to [build] for.”

Building Bigger for the Community Sablan showed the site plan for the headquarters of the Cleveland Foun­ dation, in the city’s Hough neighbor­ hood: “This client built a 40 percent larger building than they needed to. They built almost an entire floor that’s dedicated to the community and had community board meet­ ings to understand: What are the community spaces you already have?

What are you missing, so that we can

Spaces for Us to Live

design a structure that encompass­ es that? [This client said,] I’m not just going to build what I need, but how can my project also serve the community that I’m entering? We need to challenge our clients to think about how they can also have a role, an equitable role, in finding justice in the world.”

A Grill Is More Than a Grill “When we think about architecture and think about Black lives, Black spaces, it is about how we are living, not just where we’re housed. . . .

I want to think about space as not just the built environment, but the interstitial spaces and the outdoor spaces, because that’s all part of that experience.

“This [Bronx Point] is a 542affordable-housing-unit project in the Bronx. It has, in the podium, the first ever brick-and-mortar hip-hop museum. It also has a significant number of community-engagement programs at the base. We are also beautifying Mill Pond Park, and why that’s important for me to state is

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Bronx Point incorporates a hip-hop museum and community-engagement programs in a housing development on the Harlem River waterfront. S9 Architecture

because when we did community en­ gagements . . . throughout the process of developing the project, overwhelm­ ingly [the community said] they want­ ed more barbecue grills in the park.

The developer clients said, that’s not even in our purview. And I said, it doesn’t matter. You’re in a position to acknowledge what the community is saying. . . . It’s not about the barbeque grills. It’s about community. It’s about sharing a meal. It’s about having the space to commune and have events together and not be confined to the places we’re housed, but having spaces for us to live.

“The developers said, OK, we’ll pay for it, and they tripled the number of grills—and I know you’re saying, Pascale, you’re talking about a multimillion-dollar project and harping on the grills. But yes, I am.

Because that’s what the commu­ nity said they needed, and as the architect in the space, I challenged the client to go beyond what they thought they could do and pushed them further.

“We wanted to also make sure that the project was not a wall. . . . I want anyone to look at that building and to feel pride, to see culture, to see

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Fall 2023

themself represented. The entire concept of the project is hip-hop: the moving of the walls, the windows, the fenestrations, the colors of the brick, the way we outlined plat­ forms and podiums, public spaces for people to sit, the elevations. . . .

This project has ideas that should be manifested in all the ways that we think about projects: talking to the community, [embedding] the culture and concepts in the built environ­ ment, thinking about how the pro­ grams can be used, and collaborating with the community to develop and to move forward.”

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When we think about what is a great architect, it cannot just mean being on the cover of shiny magazines—but also being in political spaces, holding office. That is also an empowered and important space for us to be in.

We are activist architects. We are citizen architects.

We need to participate and re-create our relevance to our society by holding those spaces and coming into those spaces.

We are beyond when products become brick and mortar. We are problem solvers, synthesizers of complex information. We are visualizers.

We can take concepts, policies, steps and make them digestible, so everyone can understand and be able to actively participate.

We can take the language, the vernacular of architecture that can be exclusive and create words that make it logical and common, so everyone can participate. Because if you cannot speak the language, you are not part of the conversation.

And what we want is for our voices to sing and to echo and to resonate in these spaces and for us to have a powerful voice in the way that we’re framing our society in our spaces. Beyond just the us as architects—us as humble servants to society, the conduit for what it needs.

—Pascale Sablan Black Live(s) & Black Space(s): Care, Community: Housing Pratt Institute, February 23, 2023 Spaces for Us toatLive

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LONGING BELONG-ING MEMORIES DREAMS Four Pratt Alumni Artists on Painting Visions of Home

What brings us home? A light in a brownstone window, the embracing warmth of a deep tub or an imagined garden, a full bowl, a chair to rest, familiar objects, the energy of companionship or tranquility of solitude. Prattfolio asked several graduates of Pratt’s Fine Arts and Photography programs whose recent work evokes a spectrum of notions of home about their relationship with the space and the concept. Here is a selection of their work and their words.

Read the full Q&As at pratt.edu/prattfolio/painting-home.

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“I’ve always been attracted to learning about how people live their lives and how they spend their days. I want to know what people’s homes look like, probably for both comparison and curiosity’s sake. I want to look at how my life differs from everyone else’s.”

— Polly Shindler, MFA Fine Arts (Painting) ’11

Polly Shindler Packing for Vacation, 2022 20 x 16 inches

Longing, Belonging, Memories, Dreams

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“The social life I grew up with in Ethiopia allowed me to define home as my entire neighborhood.

The idea of my neighbor’s house being open at any time for me to walk in, as if it is my own space, gave me the idea that home is not a personal space but rather a shared space.

The warm social life was what home was all about for me.”

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— Bethanya Abebe, MFA Fine Arts ’21

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“Just a Place in Time is a recent painting that reflects my new home in Brooklyn. I transplanted from Tennessee to New York, where it feels like home. I’m the most comfortable I’ve ever been because of being surrounded by the organic diversities all around me.”

— Salenia Sanchez, BFA Fine Arts ’21; MPS Art Therapy and Creativity Development ’23

Salenia Sanchez Just a Place in Time, 2023 Jaybe Lee 2dddd2d2dd2222, 2022 Acrylic on inkjet print 31 x 44 inches Opposite: Bethanya Abebe Inside/Outside Acrylic on canvas 30 x 40 inches

Longing, Belonging, Memories, Dreams

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Polly Shindler TV Room with White Sofa, 2022 16 x 20 inches Polly Shindler Lights on in an Apartment Building, 2023 20 x 16 inches Opposite: Jaybe Lee Sorry, It's time to go pick up my child, 2022 Acrylic, charcoal, gouache on inkjet print 31 x 44 inches

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“I actually stopped thinking about physical home. For me, the idea of home does not exist. I look at it as a feeling of longing.”

— Jaybe Lee, MFA Photography ’22

Longing, Belonging, Memories, Dreams

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Bethanya Abebe Fish Eye Acrylic on wood 48 x 48 inches

Bethanya Abebe (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1994) moved to the US in 2008 and went on to obtain a BFA at the University of North Texas in 2018. She enrolled at Pratt Institute and completed her MFA in Fine Arts in May 2021.

She presently resides in Brooklyn, New York. Through her colorful palette, she captures her daily life encounters and moments while working primarily in acrylic on canvas. She is interested in capturing the everyday moments that are often overlooked as well as reflecting on her own life and emotions. After being introduced to fiber during her undergrad days, Bethanya grew interested in embroidery, tufting, and faux fur, which she learned to intertwine with her paintings. She continuously works to push her boundaries and experiment growth in usage of materials.

Jaybe Lee (Koln, Germany, 1988) received his MFA in photography from Pratt Institute and his BFA from University of Southern California. Recent exhibitions include the solo show Pain Is Just French for Bread at SOOT Tokyo (2022), which featured the works highlighted in this story. Lee writes: “I am an artist working with photography, painting, and sculpture to understand identity, home, place, alienation, and its relationship with myself and my vulnerability. This desire for knowledge grows from my biography: I am a Korean American man who was raised in 10 different locations on 3 different continents with shifting landscapes and parents both biological and adoptive. My body of work depicts a journey to find myself and understand the longing I feel. The iconography of travel and escape is evident in my pictures and draws from years of solitary exploration, stitching a narrative of self-journey through my work.”

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Salenia Sanchez (New York, 1992) received her BFA in Fine Arts (Painting) from Pratt Institute in 2021 and her MPS in Art Therapy and Creativity Development from Pratt in 2023. She is a painter and working art therapist.

Sanchez writes: “I explore the natural world and our ever-changing relationships with new places. My whimsical compositions make use of vibrant colors, textures, and figures to evoke my own emotional and physical journey navigating unfamiliar surroundings. My paintings require the viewers to both look at and discover. From moving around a lot in my life, I learned a deeper relationship to the natural world using and adding different shapes, textures, and colors. This challenge of adjustment and contemplation soon seeped into my work. My palette naturally evolved to express a more emotional and passionate truth and fear. Beginning with an empty space that argues love and lies, I developed these altered landscapes of introspective and celebratory experiences.

Every piece of my paintings is a reflection of a fictive realm that dwells inside me. The disorganizations of these shapes found in my paintings are a confession of both my doubts and my solutions.”

Polly Shindler (New Haven, 1977) received her MFA in painting from Pratt Institute and her BA in history from University of Massachusetts. She has shown throughout the US as well as internationally at Rafael Pérez Hernando Gallery in Madrid and Cristea Roberts Gallery in London. Upcoming projects include the NADA Art Fair in Miami with Deanna Evans Projects and a residency at Yaddo early next year. Recent solo and two-person shows are Shifting Perspective at Deanna Evans in New York City; As Safe As Houses at Jennifer Terzian Gallery in Litchfield, Connecticut; and Home Bird at Troutbeck in Amenia, New York. Recent group shows include Flower Shop at Smoke the Moon in Santa Fe; Summer in the City at Hashimoto Gallery, New York City; and an online Platform exhibition in partnership with David Zwirner with Gisela Projects.

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September 29–December 9, 2023 Pratt Manhattan Gallery 144 West 14th Street New York, NY 10011

João Musa, Amazônia 1975 [detail], 1975/2023.

Courtesy of the artist and Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo

Amazonia

Curated by Berta Sichel with Patricia Capa

News

Highlights from Pratt Institute’s News Page Read the full articles and keep up on the latest from campus and beyond at pratt.edu/news.

Pratt’s Commencement 2023 Honors professor in the Graduate Center for the Resilience of Graduating Students Planning and the Environment, who This year’s Commencement, held on was named Distinguished Teacher May 17, honored the class of 2023 with (2023–2024). He was honored with a a ceremony at Radio City Music Hall. medal designed by Young Jun Kim, The exuberant gathering recognized BFA Fine Arts (Jewelry) ’24. Jeremiah more than 1,300 graduating students.

Hadi Go, BArch ’23, and Gustavo The 134th Commencement was also Ghavami, MID ’23, were the elected live-streamed for graduating students, student speakers. friends, and family who were attend­ Members of the class of 1973 were ing remotely. also recognized on the 50th anniver­ Leo Kim, MPS Arts and Cultural sary of their graduation.

Management ’23, performed a rendi­ To see more photos from Com­ tion of Pratt’s alma mater on cello mencement, visit pratt.edu/news or before Pratt President Frances Bronet’s @prattinstitute on Instagram and use opening remarks. President Bronet the hashtag #PrattGrad23. congratulated the graduates on their remarkable achievements, acknowl­ Pratt Fashion Wows Audience at edging their resilience as students Assemblage Runway Show whose college experience was trans­ On May 10, Pratt Fashion held its 122nd formed by the pandemic. annual runway show at Pioneer Works “You have cultivated the selfin Brooklyn. The event showcased discipline and perseverance that innovative ready-to-wear collections will be essential ingredients for your from 21 graduating seniors from Pratt future success,” Bronet said. “To be Institute’s Fashion Design program honest, for our collective future and honored journalist Robin Givhan success. You are both our visionaries with the Pratt Fashion Visionary and our implementers.”

Award. The show was covered in Gary Hattem gave his first Com­ WWD, Vogue, The Cut, and elsewhere. mencement remarks since being elect­ Titled ASSEMBLAGE, the show ed as the new Board of Trustees Chair. presented the next names in fash­ “As a Pratt graduate myself, I further ion to an audience of more than 350 ask that you do not take for granted guests, with students each presenting the community that you have formed collections composed of 8 to 10 com­ while at Pratt,” Hattem said. “The plete looks, including accessories. relationships you have established At the event, Pratt Fashion an­ with fellow students and faculty will nounced the appointment of fashion anchor and inspire you for a lifetime.” designer and 2014 Visionary Award Pratt then bestowed honorary recipient Byron Lars as the next Jane degrees upon three leaders in their B. Nord Professor of Fashion Design. fields whose work embodies the inno­ (Read more at pratt.edu/news.) vation and creativity promoted by the The evening also celebrated the Institute, including graphic designer, importance of fashion as commu­ activist, and alumna Cheryl D. Miller nication by honoring Washington (Doctor of Fine Arts), Pratt alumna Post critic-at-large Robin Givhan for and architectural interior designer “her thoughtful criticism, her expert Hiroko Nakamoto (Doctor of Fine Arts), eye, her unwavering celebrations of and artist and filmmaker Lynn Hersh­ diverse voices and perspectives in man Leeson (Doctor of Fine Arts). fashion design.”

The graduation speakers also in­ Pratt Fashion Chair and inaugu­ral cluded Juan Camilo Osorio, assistant Jane B. Nord Professor of Fashion

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Fall 2023

Design Jennifer Minniti also announced the creation of Pratt’s new Master of Fine Arts in Fashion Collection + Communication, which will launch in the fall semester of 2024.

A New Public High School Opens in Brooklyn The Design Works High School in Downtown Brooklyn welcomed its inaugural class of ninth graders on September 7 following a years-long collaboration between Pratt Institute and Bank Street College of Education as part of New York City’s Imagine NYC Schools Initiative.

With funding from the XQ In­ stitute, NewSchools Venture Fund, and the NYC Public Schools, Pratt and Bank Street developed a school that combines the power of design thinking with the importance of social justice, preparing students for college and careers, while empower­ ing them to become changemakers in their communities. Reflecting a shared commitment to building a more equitable and inclusive world through education, the partnership unites Pratt’s academic excellence in art and design, as well as its history of engagement with K-12 learning and the local community, with Bank Street’s strengths-based, learnercentered approach to teaching and learning.

A team drawn from different areas of Pratt—including leadership from the Center for Art, Design, and Community Engagement K-12; the School of Design; the School of Art; the Provost’s Office; and the Office of Research and Strategic Partnerships— helped guide Design Works through planning, community engagement, and design phases.

The Design Works curriculum re­ volves around hands-on, collaborative projects that confront real problems in communities. As part of the curric­ ulum, students can pursue pathways

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Commencement photo by Rebecca Smeyne

“I charge you to further find your vocation and let it lead you to your passion for serving others. . . . May you find your purpose in being the solution for the problem that you see.”

— 134th Commencement keynote speaker Cheryl D. Miller, to the class of 2023

At the 2023 Pratt Shows: Fashion, senior Yichen Lu was presented with the Christopher Hunte “On Point” Award, a $5,000 prize selected by the Fashion Department faculty. Photo by Fernando Colon

News

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Pratt Shows: Design 2023, which was part of the NYCxDesign festival. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne

A photograph of industrial design educator Rowena Reed Kostellow with a student (February 4, 1966), part of the spring 2023 exhibition Driving Creative: Pratt Institute, General Motors, and the Foundation of Industrial Design at Pratt Manhattan Gallery. Courtesy of Pratt Institute Archives Negatives Collection

of learning with a focus on art equity, tech equity, and housing equity.

The Design Works High School came out of the Imagine NYC Schools competition that first started in 2019.

This process enabled educators and community members to propose learning environments for the 21st century. As Design Works develops, Pratt and Bank Street will take a more advisory role in governance.

chair of the Department of Digital Arts, assuming the role in July.

In the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, educator and researcher Christopher Brownell was named chair of the Department of Mathe­ matics and Science, stepping into the role in July. Design historian Sarah A. Lichtman was named chair of the De­ partment of History of Art and Design, assuming the role in August.

Exhibition Showcases How Pratt Alumni Helped Shape the American Automobile This past spring, Driving Creative: Pratt Institute, General Motors, and the Foundation of Industrial Design at Pratt Manhattan Gallery chronicled 80 years of creative collaboration be­ tween Pratt and General Motors (GM) through art, historic photographs, and installations from GM’s Design Archive & Special Collections. On view from April 5 to May 20, the exhi­ bition was itself a collaborative effort between Pratt and GM to showcase the impact of design on American life.

This relationship dates back to the early 1930s, when industrial design educators Alexander Kostellow and Rowena Reed Kostellow established the industrial design program at Pratt, through which many students were encouraged to apply to GM. “The collaborative partnership de­ veloped an industrial design curricu­ lum relative to automotive design at a time when none existed,” writes Pratt Trustee Sharon Gauci, GM executive director of design-GMC and Global Buick, in an exhibition essay. “The impact of this collaboration is deep, and, even now, in 2023, while the tools and technology that students use may have changed, the principles of automotive design and the founda­ tions for it remain the same.”

The Pratt alumni who began work­ ing with GM in the 1940s were some of the first professionally trained designers, and they would go on to transform automotive, product, and graphic design.

Alumni currently at GM continue to push the field of design forward with work that spans innovative areas such as virtual reality, deep-space exploration, and electric vehicles.

More Headlines

Recent Academic Leadership Appointments Quilian Riano was appointed dean of the School of Architecture, stepping into the role in May after serving as interim dean since August 2022.

In the School of Art, artist and de­ signer Douglas Easterly was named

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Fall 2023

Pratt Institute Ranked One of the World’s Top 10 Art and Design Colleges in 2023: The annual QS World University Rankings by Subject also place Pratt in the top five colleges for art and design in the US. Student Inspiration for Biocentric Design Blooms at Plant Nursery: Pratt students weave ideas of sustain­ ability and care into their Industrial Design capstone projects.

Guggenheim Fellowships Awarded to Three Pratt Faculty Members: Claudia Bitrán, James Hannaham, and Mary Mattingly are among the 2023 recipients of the prestigious grants from the John Simon Guggen­ heim Memorial Foundation.

Pratt Is a Top Five Graphic Design School in the 2023 Animation Career Review Rankings: The ninth annual rankings from the online professional resource considered over 700 schools from across the country with graphic design programs.

Students Explore New Ways of Living in 2023 NYCxDesign: At the annual festival celebrating design in New York City, Pratt students reimagined furniture, community, water access, and more.

Social Justice and the Power of a Creative Education: Pratt recently hosted the 2023 HASTAC Confer­ ence, which explored the intersec­ tion of social justice, design, and the humanities.

Alexa Kasdan Named Executive Director of the Pratt Center for Community Development: Kasdan brings two decades of experience in participatory research and com­ munity advocacy to the role, which she assumed on September 1.

For more on these stories and the latest updates from Pratt, visit pratt.edu/news.

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1. Bravespace Compilation Art Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, MFA Communications Design ’15 Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, whose work has recently appeared at Lincoln Center and the Museum of the City of New York, has contributed to a new project from the Smithsonian Institution, providing cover art and webexclusive animations for their Asian Pacific American Center’s Bravespace compilation. This collection of music from Asian American women and nonbinary artists ranges from ambient sound art to soulful pop. The album is available on all major streaming platforms. Learn more at apa.si.edu.

2. PaniEl Scarf Elke Reva Sudin, BFA Communications Design (Illustration) ’09 Elke Reva Sudin’s limited-edition series of scarves arrives with a bent toward social justice, applying a wearable work of art that celebrates “the divine feminine.”

This scarf features “unapologetically psychedelic” prints and is available in both 100 percent silk and a hybrid of silk and modal. The name translates from Hebrew into “Face of God,” as a way to honor Sudin’s Jewish heritage, and is a reference to the pineal gland. Sudin hopes for her scarf to serve “as a reminder for us to remain open to receiving new ideas and information.” Available at elkerevasudin.com.

3. Barnacle Hanging Lamp Kenneth Cobonpue, BID ’91 Kenneth Cobonpue has spent years unifying traditional craftsmanship with avant-garde techniques by weaving elements of the natural world into his work. With the Barnacle Hanging Lamp, Cobonpue has turned to what he calls “one of nature’s most beautiful random creations” for inspiration.

Cobonpue’s Barnacle Collection, which was a finalist in the Lighting Category at the International Furnishings & Design Association (IFDA) Selects program, features this rice paper lamp. The lamps are hand assembled, ensuring that each takes on a unique figure. Learn more at kennethcobonpue.com.

New and Noteworthy

4. Zilot & Other Important Rhymes (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) Erin Odenkirk, BA Critical and Visual Studies ’23, and Bob Odenkirk “What can I create in lockdown, surrounded by my family?” This was the question that inspired Erin Odenkirk and her father, Bob, to create the illustrated children’s book Zilot & Other Important Rhymes in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on aspects of everyday life, the book builds upon poems that were originally written

by Bob with Erin and her brother Nate when they were children, and expands these works into a playfully illustrated world. Available at hachettebookgroup.com.

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5. Lift Trivet by Fruitsuper Sallyann Corn, BID ’09, Joe Kent, BID ’09

6. Ecophilia (Available Items) Constantin Boym, Professor of Industrial Design

Featured in Wirecutter as one of the “20 Gifts That’ll Last Forever (or Extremely Close),” Sallyann Corn and Joe Kent’s Lift Trivet by Fruitsuper takes on the shape and sophistication of a minimalist art piece for a practical problem: to protect your tabletop from hot pots and warm dishes. Utilizing a design that ages from a sleek brass finish to a richer, rustic tone, the Lift Trivet was praised

by Wirecutter for being “beautiful enough to always be on display.”

Available at fruitsuper.com.

Constantin Boym was on sabbatical at his home in rural Esopus, New York, in 2022–2023 when he began to conduct research into the habitats and living spaces of animals in his area. Soon he was creating habitats of his own. Now, they’ve been collected in a book for anyone to make. Ecophilia functions as a practical guide, with easy-to-follow plans and photographs for anyone to construct habitats for creatures from birds to toads. Available at availableitems.com.

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Fall 2023

7. Tomie dePaola Forever Stamps by USPS Tomie dePaola, BFA ’54 (1934–2020) In celebration of the life and career of Tomie dePaola, USPS has printed a special stamp displaying the work of the singular prolific children’s book author and illustrator. It features a detail from the cover of the first installment of dePaola’s Caldecott Honor–winning Strega Nona series. The stamp shows the titular hero with her signature magic pasta pot, and a tiny heart in the corner representing one of dePaola’s favorite graphic elements and Strega Nona’s key ingredient, love. Available at usps.com.

8. Clover Coffee Table by Grain Chelsea Minola, BFA Interior Design ’02 Chelsea Minola has spent the last 15 years working with her husband, James Minola, on Grain, a studio focused on designing furniture, lighting, textiles, and objects made from socially and environmentally responsible materials. Debuting at Colony, a cooperative gallery, design studio, and strategy firm, their Clover Coffee Table is a keystone of their latest collection, Clover, “a continuation of Grain’s research and fascination with cork, a material that is rapidly renewable, carbon positive, and completely biodegradable.” Available at graindesign.com.

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Personal philanthropy has always been a keystone of Pratt’s creative spirit Pratt is an institute, an experience, and an idea. For 136 years, Pratt has educated students and continues to be a beacon of learning and creativity.

Personal philanthropy has always been a keystone of Pratt’s creative spirit.

Philanthropy can provide benefits to you and a loved one while you give to Pratt.

A bequest in your will or trust, a direct gift from your IRA, a gift of appreciated

securities, a gift from your donor advised fund, or a charitable remainder trust or a charitable gift annuity* are creative ways you can support today’s Pratt students while helping yourself.

We welcome the opportunity to speak with you about the many ways in which you can join in Pratt’s creative spirit. *where allowable in certain states

Contact Robert M. Danzig, director of planned giving, at rdanzig@pratt.edu or 718.399.4296 to discuss gift strategies that can help you support Pratt Institute while also providing significant benefits to you and your family.

Class Notes

Class Notes is Pratt alumni news compiled from alumni submissions, items shared by faculty and staff, graduates’ newsletters, and media mentions. Send your updates: see page 60 for submission guidelines.

John F. Servo (1921–2006), alumnus of advertising design, had his work featured in Generations, a two-per­ son painting show that also includ­ ed the work of his grandson of the same name, who goes by the artist’s moniker City Kitty. The group show— which opened May 12, 2023, at All Street NYC in Manhattan—was billed as showing “the story of this family’s generations of NYC-based painters.”

The opening reception featured City Kitty interviewing his father and curator of the show, John G. Servo.

1950s Jackie Grineff, BFA Illustration ’55, who goes by the name Lyn Sieffert professionally, has been serving as a docent in the city of Detroit. She has also worked for Cranbrook Acade­ my of Art. As a docent, Grineff has

Prattfolio

then to Pratt Institute.” Soon after, he became an art teacher before pausing his creative life to take care of his ill wife. Sam’s passion for illustration was reignited through collaboration with his son, who posted their collab­ orative comic strips online, eventual­ ly selling a comic to The New Yorker.

(The New York Times)

a particular interest in music and architecture, with knowledge on the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Detroit’s Orchestra Hall, as well as architects such as Minoru Yamasaki and Eero Saarinen. Grineff has also received recognition for her service in her local Historic Districts Com­ mission. She writes: “The benefit of a Pratt education is you will always compulsively be looking for ways to see every aspect of life differently . . .

This versatility is evident in my life’s portfolio of work.”

1960s

Sam Frazer, Art and Design Edu­ cation ’55, was recently highlighted by his son, Brian Frazer, in The New York Times Modern Love column.

Sam is described as having been a talented young illustrator who “com­ muted an hour-plus each way from Brooklyn to go to the High School of Industrial Art in Manhattan and

John Behrmann, BArch ’60, after nearly 60 years, has sold and retired from his architecture firm, Mascioni and Behrmann Architects and En­ gineers PC. The firm was founded in 1964 with his former Pratt professor, John G. Mascioni PE. For the first 40 years, the firm’s practice was primari­ ly involved with corporate interiors

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Artwork by John F. Servo ’42 (top). Jackie Grineff (Lyn Sieffert) ’55 standing beside a sheep statue from Rochester, Michigan's public art project Ewe Review

1940s

Clockwise from top right: Theoharis David ’61 receiving a lifetime achievement award. John Huszar ’63 in Paris filming Claude Monet's Water Lilies. Mansion in Englewood, New Jersey, photo courtesy of David Lloyd Maron ’65

such as the New York headquarters for the Union Bank of Switzerland and the New York, Toronto, and Montreal headquarters of the Royal Bank of Canada. In the last 20 years, the firm’s work has been primarily in healthcare, working with health care providers such as VNS Health and Northwell Health, among others.

Behrmann still serves as a consultant to the firm.

Theoharis David, FAIA, BArch ’61, Professor of Architecture, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from SHARE Architects representing Southeastern European Architects and the Cyprus Architects Associa­ tion in Nicosia, Cyprus. This honor was bestowed on Theo as he enters his 54th year of teaching at Pratt, and in recognition of his firm—Theo David Architects TDA+KAL— for their role in realizing projects of national and international significance in architecture and urbanism, and for a significant contribution towards the production of the legacy of architec­ tural modernity in Cyprus.

Howard Berelson, BID ’62, an illus­ trator of children’s books, trade and text for 25 years, is in the permanent collections of Children’s Literature at Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers Uni­ versity, and The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. He is also a per­ manent-roster teaching artist for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, through which he taught for 26 years.

He continues his present direction of written and illustrated works.

Bruce Hannah, BID ’63, Professor Emeritus and former chair of Pratt’s Industrial Design Department, and Tucker Viemeister, MID ’74, com­ piled the writings of Alexander Kostellow, founder and chair of the Industrial Design Department from 1944 to 1954. Kostellow was also the founder of the Universal Foundation Program, and is often referred to as

the “father of industrial design edu­ cation.” These facsimiles of Kostellow’s handwritten letters, alongside his original articles (some of which were initially published in Interiors and

by Pratt Institute), were published in a single volume titled Alexander Kostellow: Collected Thoughts, which is available on Blurb.

John Huszar, BFA Advertising Design ’63, is the president and founder of FilmAmerica, Inc. He is providing film clips from his award-winning PBS documentary Virgil Thomson Composer for the exhibition Gertrude Stein and Picasso at the Musee Luxembourg in Paris, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death.

The film premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and fea­ tures Stein and Thomson’s acclaimed

Class Notes

opera Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) with its all-Black cast and cellophane sets. Scenes from this film were also used in the exhibition The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant Garde at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

David Lloyd Maron, BArch ’65, and Emily Kosstrin Mann, BFA Design ’65, are currently assisting the Engle­ wood, New Jersey, Historical Society to relocate and preserve a Second Empire mansion, circa 1865. Maron is currently serving as a leader in the relocation, while Mann is a City Planning Board member and sup­ porter of this project. The structure, with its 40-foot-high tower, will be disassembled, trucked to a city park, reassembled, and become home to the Englewood Historical Society.

47

Joseph Szabo, MFA Fine Arts ’68, is a photographer whose latest photobook, Teens Unpublished, was recently released by the publisher Amusement Parking. The collection includes 21 previously unpublished works from the photographer’s series of portraits of teenagers taken from 1969 to 1999. Referred to by Szabo as “his Archive of American Teen Life,” these previously unreleased photographs were rediscovered by the photographer in his home in the spring of 2013.

Tom Patti, BID ’67; MID ’69, was com­ missioned to create two integrated artworks for the recently completed Madison House at 15 E 30th Street in New York City. The vertical 12-foot glass mural and the lobby’s kinetic metal sculpture were conceived to reflect the ecological relationship between humanity and the environ­ ment. The Lenape, the original in­ habitants of the Northeastern Wood­ lands, called their land Manahatta, meaning “hilly land.” Named to honor the Lenape, and their connec­ tion to the earth, the artist’s vertical, 12-foot artwork uses the transparent and reflective qualities of glass.

titled The Alphabet and Artists Books, which opened on July 15, 2023. The featured work, Alphabook: Cherokee Portfolio, has been acquired by a collector in the UK. Ted Shaine, BFA Advertising Design ’68, was recently awarded the prize of Overall Runner Up in Wild Heart Gallery’s Masters of Wildlife Art 2023 International Juried Art Exhibition.

Shaine won for his linoleum print PoliNation, described by the artist as

Lorna Ritz, BFA Fine Arts (Painting) ’69, worked in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Lew Spratlan to present a discussion at Smith College’s Earle Recital Hall on February 9, 2023. Billed as “A Concert Conversation,” Ritz explains how “music moves in a linear way, and painting, even though it takes months to make whole, is seen in one single moment. Lew’s music incites visual responses from which I continue to paint.” The discussion

Claire Jeanine Satin, MFA Fine Arts (Sculpture) ’68, had two of her bookworks on display at the Bodle­ ian Library at Oxford University in Oxford, UK, as part of an exhibition

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Clockwise from top left: Tom Patti ’67; ’69, detail of Manahatta. Ted Shaine ’68, PoliNation. Joseph Szabo ’68, Pre-Prom, 1997. Claire Jeanine Satin ’68, Alphabook: Cherokee Portfolio

a portrait that “holds the shape and definition of a honey bee while also embracing abstraction.”

This year, the DGT Alumni Association (dgtaa.org) celebrated the 125th anni­ versary of their fraternity, founded at Pratt just 10 years after the Institute was established. At a gathering of DGT alumni this past April organized by DGT En­ gagement Team Leads Anne Marie Michael, BArch ’81, and Elycia Lerman, BIE ’82, Courtesy of Pratt Institute Alumni Engagement DGT Alumni Association President Tom Fiorella, BIE ’74, shared a brief history of the organization, which launched in 1898 as Delta Theta, part of a national fraternity. They reorganized in 1929 as local fraternity Delta Gamma Theta, Alpha Chapter, and again in 1961 as Tau Delta Phi, Tau Sigma Chapter, before returning to Delta Gamma Theta (DGT) in 1988.

While DGT had, until recently, not inducted members since 2006, the organization continued art- and community-based activities at its house at 272 Clinton Avenue with the Pratt student community. From 2015 to 2021, the DGT Alumni Association operated Gallery House, which hosted exhibitions by Pratt undergraduate and graduate students and provided alumni mentoring. Starting this past academic year and coinciding with DGT’s 125th milestone, a new initiative has been underway to reimagine the Gallery House program with the involvement of 13 Pratt undergraduate students who made a creative appeal to the DGT Alumni Association to join the organization. (Gallery House is on Instagram at @dgtgalleryhouse.)

The 125th anniversary gathering looked forward to the future of the organization through its newest student members alongside a celebration of its past and the many Pratt alumni who have shaped it. This included a special recognition of the oldest living known and active DGT alum, Rodney (Rod) Finkle, BID ’55. Fiorella read a passage from Finkle that he found particularly fitting for the occasion: “There is something more fundamental to this fraternity. Something unknown to all outsiders; something deep and personal which can perhaps be partially explained by this: There is a form of love men know. It includes not romance nor the yen to roam but a liking to one another evident in these words: This is my fraternity brother,” to which Fiorella added “and sister.” concluded with a performance of a chamber work by Spratlan for violin, viola, and piano, which was inspired by a painting composed by Ritz.

1970s Ron Brucato, BFA Photography ’70, is currently retired and living in Atlanta with three cats, and wrote that he is “happy as a clam in mud.”

Robert “Bobby” M. Snyder Jr., BFA Interior Design ’71, and his wife, Annie, were recently honored by the West Virginia Snow Sports Museum, and were inducted into their Hall of Fame as members of its 2022 class.

Both skiers from a young age, Bobby and Annie have served as instructors for various institutions since arriv­ ing in West Virginia in 1977. These institutions include Canaan Valley State Park, Mount Timberline Ski Area, and the Timberline Ski School, where Bobby served as director.

Class Notes

Naj Wikoff, BFA Fine Arts ’71, works as a consultant with Aesthetics, Inc. In his role, Wikoff uses the arts to create welcoming and uplifting hos­ pital environments across the US and Canada. Wikoff has been working in healthcare, medical education, and public health for 40 years. His work began at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine with people living with AIDS. He subsequently spent 12 years with the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth Medical School/Dart­ mouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

49

Bonnie Moore Corwin, BFA Commu­ nications Design ’72, is publishereditor of Textiles Asia Journal.

Launched in 2009, the journal seeks to connect people interested in Asian textiles. Articles are designed to in­ form readers about the fine materials, techniques, artistry, symbolism, and historic and cultural significance of Asian textiles. Readers include col­ lectors, academics, museum curators and conservators; dealers; fashion and design professionals; crafts persons; and enthusiastic novices. In the words of Corwin, “Textiles Asia Journal appeals to those with an es­ tablished knowledge in all aspects of Asian textiles as well as to those who are just beginning their interest in this fascinating field of study.” Learn more at textilesasia.com.

Following two Fulbrights devoted to developing arts programs in chil­ dren’s hospitals across Russia, Wikoff cofounded the National Initia­ tive for Arts in Health in the Military.

Ongoing is arts for youth at risk.

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Naj Wikoff ’71 (bottom left). Cover of Textiles Asia courtesy of Bonnie Moore Corwin ’72

In May, Tatler Asia published an in-depth feature on Pratt alumni in the Philippines who are shaping the future of Filipino architecture and design. The story was published on the occasion of Pratt President Frances Bronet’s visit to the Philippines last spring, hosted by Doris Magsaysay Ho, BID ’80, who highlighted the work of alumni including Photo by Joseph Pascual Ed Calma, BArch ’88; Kenneth Cobonpue, BID ’91; Dom Galicia; Rhea Matute, MID ’98; Tina Periquet, MS Interior Design ’94; Impy Pilapil; Nestor Vinluan, MFA Fine Arts ’82; and Joey Yupangco, BID ’84. During President Bronet’s visit, detailed in the feature, several of the alumni showed the president their accomplishments in person, including on a tour taken through the National Museum of Natural History, which was transformed

by Galicia and Periquet from an obsolete government building into a lively structure.

There was also an exclusive viewing of paintings by Vinluan and glass sculptures

by Pilapil at Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and a visit to the Design Center of the Philippines, led by Matute, who is executive director of the organization. Notably, the founding dean of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Yupangco, introduced President Bronet to the campus, whose main building was designed by Calma, also part of the tour, and informed her that their curriculum was in part shaped by Pratt’s.

Of the alumni, Bronet remarked, “I have never seen a more compassionate and intellectually generous community.” The story is available online at tatlerasia.com.

Clockwise from top left: Cover of Apple of My Eye: A Visual Memoir of New York by Elaine Norman ’72. Cover of Fashion Portfolio by Michelle Nahum-Albright ’75. Lynn Saville ’76, Red House, Myrtle-Wyckoff, 2022. Firebird concept model, photo by Constance Smith ’72; ’73

Firebird III concept, designed on the exterior by late Pratt alumnus Norm J. James, BID ’56 (1932–2020), a recip­ ient of Pratt’s Alumni Achievement Award for Career Achievement. The Firebird III also appears in Smith’s book Damsels in Design.

Kenneth Fehling, BCE ’72, retired from Stony Brook University in 2009.

He notes that the bachelor’s degree in engineering that he earned from Pratt “opened many doors for me to obtain Building Operations posi­ tions at Stony Brook University and Queens College.” Since retiring, and after years of traveling to Hawaii every winter, Fehling and his wife have used his pension to purchase a condominium and permanently relocate to Honolulu.

Elaine Norman, BFA Fine Arts (Print­ making) ’72, has released the book Apple of My Eye: A Visual Memoir of New York, which highlights work she created over 35 years. The book has recently been included in the Muse­ um of Modern Art and the Franklin Furnace Artists’ Book Collection. This is Norman’s second book included in a major collection, with her photo­ graphic book Flamenco at Fazil’s— covering the legendary dance studio once located in the Theatre District— being featured in the collections of the Library of Congress as well as the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library.

Philip Gefter, BFA Fine Arts ’73, had his biography of Richard Avedon, What Becomes a Legend Most, re­ leased in paperback format on Harp­ er Perennial in September 2023. His new book, Cocktails with George and Martha: Marriage, Movies, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is due out from Bloomsbury in February 2024.

Michael Zenreich, BFA Fine Arts ’74, will be having a solo show of his new work at Pleiades Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, New York City. The show runs from October 31, 2023, until November 25, 2023.

Michelle Nahum-Albright, BFA Communications Design ’75, has co­ authored the book Fashion Portfolio: Create, Curate, Innovate with Tamara Albu. Published by Laurence King Publishing, the book takes up-andcoming designers through the ins and outs of creating their own brands while elucidating how powerful storytelling can function as a pivotal sales tool. The book is available at us.laurenceking.com.

John Woodrow Kelley, BFA Envi­ ronmental Design ’76; BArch ’78, has published a monograph of his paint­ ings, which the artist says is inspired

by a devotion “to creating a contem­ porary interpretation of the classical tradition in Western civilization.” The book, John Woodrow Kelley: Greek Mythology Now, features an introduc­ tion by David Ebony, the editor of Art in America magazine. After earning a degree in architecture from Pratt, Kelley studied at the Art Students League of New York and the New York Academy. Kelley has donated a copy of his recently published monograph to the Pratt Institute Libraries.

Lynn Saville, MFA Photography ’76, recently had her photography fea­ tured in a group show at Alessia Pala­ dini Gallery in Milan, Italy. The show opened on June 29, 2023. Saville’s main gallery representation is Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City.

Constance Smith, BFA Fine Arts ’72; MID ’73, recently served as a judge for EyesOn Design, a concours event on the Ford Estate held to benefit the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmol­ ogy (DIO). DIO researchers strive to use AI to enable the blind to see.

Additionally, Smith mentioned she was “thrilled” to be able to award first place in its category to GM’s 1959

Class Notes

51

Maritza Davila, MFA Fine Arts ’77, was selected to participate in the Mobility Center Project in Memphis, Tennessee, with a mural that is 8 feet high by 26 feet in length. The mural’s image was also produced as an accordion book, which the artist says is meant to reflect “the spirit of the people of Memphis.” Davila led a conversation during a panel titled Made In, which took place on March 4, 2023, in the auditorium of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis.

The panel was made up of four women artists from diverse creative back­ grounds who were present to discuss their creative journeys.

Bob Kupiec, AIA, BArch ’77, is the principal at Kupiec Architects PC in Santa Barbara. He has received the AIA Honor Award for the newly completed renovation of and addi­ tions to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The 50-million-dollar project has transformed the 1917 landmark building into a 21st-century state-ofthe art cultural hub for California’s central coast. The project included

a complete seismic retrofit, all new building systems, and expansion of gallery spaces.

Frank McCarthy, BFA Fine Arts ’78, embarked on his third solo exhibi­ tion, Chimeric Landscapes, at the Tierra Baldia Art Gallery in Lima, Peru. The show was open from June 16 to July 19, 2023, and is a follow-up to the artist’s first show, from 1978, of on-site murals, A House Is Not a Home.

1980s Wendy Popp, BFA Communications Design ’81, has illustrations featured in a children’s book titled Blessings for You. This collaboration with nat­ uralist author, field guide, and mu­ sician Doug Wood is part of a series of books supporting the intention to bridge cultures. The series includes creatives who are from the United States, China, Denmark, and Russia, and is accompanied by a song/ lyrics book with Mandarin-English translation. The book is published

by King-In Culture, a Beijing-based publishing company with a focus on engaging children through their intimate connection with their envi­ ronment and natural community.

Scott Santoro, BFA Communications Design ’82, Professor (CCE) of Under­ graduate Communications Design,

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Clockwise from top left: Cover of Contemporary Color, Theory and Use by Steven Bleicher ’77; ’79. Artwork by Frank McCarthy ’78. Bookplate of Charles Goslin, courtesy of Scott Santoro ’82. Photo by Ciro Coelho, courtesy of Bob Kupiec ’77. Maritza Davila ’77, Conversations, 2022

Steven Bleicher, BFA Fine Arts ’77; MFA Fine Arts ’79, has recently had his book Contemporary Color: Theory and Use published in a third edition

by Routledge Press. According to Bleicher, this textbook is a “compre­ hensive text on color, and focuses on digital color and its relationship to other new technologies as well as traditional color theory.” This new third edition is fully revised and il­ lustrated with new updated material and images.

Cover of Fuzzy Baseball Vol. 5: BaseBALLoween by John Steven Gurney ’84 (left). Packaging for Mattel's Barbie Fashion Designer by Garrett Burke ’85

Fashion alumnus Emilio Sosa was nominated for two 2023 Tony Awards for his costume design.

The prolific designer, who has previously been nominated for his work on costumes for The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess and Trouble in Mind, was recognized this year for his work on Good Night, Oscar, the story of a troubled raconteurpianist, and Ain’t No Mo’, an African-American satire on contemporary America. His work on these shows led to a retrospective on Sosa’s The 2022 Broadway production of Ain’t No Mo’. Photo by Joan Marcus work featured in The New York Times, which tracks the acclaimed designer’s career trajectory, including his transformative experience working for Grace Miceli at Grace Costumes while studying at Pratt. In the piece, Sosa notes that “I never felt I belonged, I never felt I looked right, I never felt anything was right about me . . . But then a teacher of mine used art to try to get me to come out of my shell. She put a colored pencil in my hand, and I never let it go.” recently archived the graphic work of former Pratt professor of graphic design and illustration Charles Goslin (1932–2007), who taught undergrad­ uate communications design from 1966 to 2007. Two sets of Goslin’s designs were shipped to RISD (where he received his BFA) and to The Herb Lubalin Study Center at The Cooper Union for future generations to find.

Goslin’s work was being stored at Pratt in three flat files stuffed with printed samples. There were also more than 150 framed design pieces of his work and of his students’ work, which were distributed among fac­ ulty, friends, and students, both past and present.

baseball season “(on Halloween night) in a cemetery against Count Flappula and the Graveyard Ghastlies. The sto­ ry is a romp filled with doppelgangers,

ghouls, goblins, and even a visit from the Reading Level Police.”

Garrett Burke, BFA Communica­ tions Design ’85, saw his packaging for Mattel’s Barbie Fashion Designer inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame, part of The National Museum of Play. Widely acknowl­ edged as the first market success in games for girls, in two months the game sold more than 500,000 copies, outselling contemporary market leaders like Quake and DOOM.

John Steven Gurney, BFA Illus­ tration ’84, released his new book Fuzzy BaseBALLoween in July 2023, the fifth in his humorous Fuzzy Baseball graphic novel series for kids, published by Papercutz. In Gurney’s words, the book animates the Fern­ wood Valley Fuzzies’ last game of the

Class Notes

53

Heather Philip-O’Neal, BArch ’86, has been elected to serve as trea­ surer of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) National. In the announcement of this achievement, the AIA mentioned that Philip-O’Neal has recently served as a member of AIA’s Small Firm Exchange Board and the Finance and Audit Committee, and has been a member of AIA NY’s Advocacy Committee since 2020.

Philip-O’Neal, who is the principal and owner of HPP International, LLC, in New York City, commented that, as treasurer, she hopes to “provide financial leadership while continuing to uphold the standards of excellence in managing AIA finances.”

Jane Greenwood, BArch ’87, an­ nounced that following 20 successful years of co-ownership and leadership at Kostow Greenwood Architects, she will now devote time to pursue new career interests. Greenwood is recognized as a leader in preserva­ tion/adaptive reuse and workplace design for broadcast media centers.

Her awards include recognition from Crain’s New York, as a Notable Women in Construction, Design and Architecture; BUILD Magazine; HOUZZ, as one of 7 Game-Changing LGBT Architects; the Women Build­ ers Council; OUT Magazine, as one of its Most Influential LGBTQ People

of the Year; and New York Business Journal as a Woman of Influence.

tial dancer Maurice Hines. The web­ site for his company is cinqua.com.

William (Bill) Billec, BFA Film ’88, started a new graphic designer role in the marketing department of Unit­ ed Window and Door, a New Jersey– based regional manufacturer of vinyl windows and doors, in December.

He recently designed a triptych (40 x 60-inch plexiglass panels) called “Quality, Service, and Innovation.”

The graphic work features images of United Window and Door’s products and factories. It will be displayed in the corporate headquarters gallery.

Peter Wachtel, MID ’92, and a class of his at Adolfo Camarillo High School in Camarillo, California, have successfully built the world’s largest charcuterie board, which was offi­ cially recognized by Guinness World Records. The 62.38 meter board is, in Wachtel’s words, “longer than two blue whales and, standing on end, taller than a 13-story building and 500 lbs of food!”

1990s Stefan Benn, BPS Construction Management ’90, has launched the AllsWell smartphone app, a “personal safety and emergency alert app for people living, commuting, or travel­ ing alone,” after five years of devel­ opment and testing. Available on standard Apple or Android phones, the app “combines the panic button functionality with inactivity moni­ toring,” which can trigger the app to send a location alert to close contacts and emergency responders “even when you’re unable to press a button.”

Learn more at allswellalert.com.

John Carluccio, BArch ’92, shared a recent project, Sxratch Essentials, in which he interviews DJs and dis­ cusses “the most definitive scratch patterns in turntablism history.” Car­ luccio also put out the film Maurice Hines: Bring Them Back, exploring the life of the prominent and influen­

Marian Gravel, MID ’94, has been a human factors engineer at BD, a medical products company that aims to advance the world of health “by improving medical discovery, diag­ nostics and the delivery of care,” in the urology and critical care division since March 2021.

Edel Rodriguez, BFA Fine Arts ’94, had his gallery show Apocalypso run from March to April of this year at the County College of Morris. The show, which the artist describes as explor­ ing “the state of the world in the past thirteen years,” was recently covered

by The New Yorker, which featured a number of paintings that were first presented in TIME, The New York Times, and The New Yorker itself.

Christian P. Arkay-Leliever, MID ’95, was recently covered by CT Bites, a Connecticut-based food journal, for the extensive number of restaurants, venues, and small businesses he has designed throughout the state and surrounding areas. Known for his bombastic and intricate designs, he was recognized in the article for his work on restaurants such as Char + Lemon. He also attributes a great deal of admiration to his close friend and mentor from Pratt, Bruce Han­ nah, BID ’63, Professor Emeritus of Industrial Design.

Cheryl Gross, BFA Communications Design ’95; MFA Fine Arts (New Forms) ’09, Adjunct Professor (CCE) of Undergraduate Communications Design, has been included in three art shows over the past year. Gross describes her solo show, BoxingBabes & Cowgirls at New Jersey Community College, as a collection of paintings and inventive portraits that “embrac­ es women’s empowerment, showcas­ ing women boxers and cowgirls.” Her work was also included in Commit to Memory: The Precipice of Extinction (Louis L. Redding Gallery, Wilming­ ton, Delaware), a show that tackled

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William (Bill) Billec ’88, “Quality, Service, and Innovation”

Similarly, Burke’s Xbox video game packaging for Halo: Combat Evolved was inducted in 2017. In Burke’s words, “Halo remains one of the most popular games of all time, redefin­ ing players’ expectations for the first-person action genre and gener­ ating mega sequels.” His website is garrettburke.com.

Affairs, the committee “reviews re­quests for import restrictions sub­ mitted to the United States by foreign governments, considers proposals to extend existing agreements and emergency actions, carries out ongoing review of current import restrictions, and provides reports of its findings and recommendations to the Department of State.”

Clockwise from top left: Cheryl Gross ’95; ’09, BoxingBabe 28, 2022. Dragons (detail), from Asian futures, without Asians, performed by Astria Suparak ’00 at MoMA in New York City, 2021. Artwork by Gregory Fritz Laplanche ’02.

Cover of The Heart Is a Sandwich by Jason Fulford ’96

2000s

issues of endangered species in the world today, courtesy of the Bridge Gallery. Additionally, her flag design was included in The Flag Project at Rockefeller Center, as part of the food-themed fourth installment of this annual New York City tradition.

Jason Fulford, BFA Communications Design ’96, has published his latest photo book, The Heart Is a Sandwich.

The book, which was released in April 2023, is conceptualized as a col­ lection of short stories, with the artist arranging photographs he took in Italy for over a decade into narrative sequences.

Amy Cappellazzo, MS City and Regional Planning ’97, a founder and principal of Art Intelligence Global whose 30-year-long career in fine art marketing has included high-ranking positions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, was appointed this year by President Joe Biden as a member of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee. As noted by the US Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural

Tahir Hemphill, MS Communica­ tions Design ’00, recently had his project Rap Research Lab on view at the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Curat­ ed by Rebecca Uchill, the director of CADVC, Rap Research Lab includes light drawings, a rap lyric generator, and a map built on “semantic rela­ tionships of tens of thousands of rap lyrics.” (Hyperallergic) Chloe Hill, Communications Design ’00, invented a product that func­ tions as a rest aid that dramatically improves airline passengers’ in-flight comfort, and last spring, launched a successful fundraising campaign to support product development.

The TSA-approved device, TruRest, is a forward-leaning rest aid that can support people’s full body, and was initially inspired by Hill’s own discomfort on a long flight from Singapore to the US.

Class Notes

Astria Suparak, BFA Fine Arts (Drawing) ’00, is the featured artist in the spring issue of X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal, which contains a limited-edition poster series titled “Ancient Sci-Fi” and a conversation between Suparak and Dorothy R. Santos. X-TRA presented the inperson premiere of Suparak’s perfor­ mance lecture “Asian futures, without Asians” at 2220 Arts + Archives on June 1, 2023. This illustrated presen­ tation, which examines 60 years of American science fiction cinema through the lens of Asian appropria­ tion and whitewashing, has been per­ formed at MoMA, ICA LA, the Wattis Institute, Spike Island, and Lucasfilm, and written about in The New York Times and 4Columns and on KQED.org.

Gregory Fritz Laplanche, BFA Fash­ ion Design ’02, had 12 of his paintings included as a permanent part of the Centro Fidel Castro Museum in

55

Havana, Cuba. The addition of these paintings into the new museum was celebrated during an exhibition that opened on August 13, 2023.

Library and “established the Cycle Alliance, a teen advocacy group that fights period poverty and the stigma of menstruation.” (Library Journal)

Anthony Macbain, BFA Communi­ cations Design ’02, founded Anthrox Studio with his wife, Roxie Vizcarra, in 2019. The company is a video game and entertainment industry–focused design studio “specializing in visual development, marketing illustration, and creative direction.” Recently, Anthrox Studio received a Clio Award for Excellence in Advertising for work commissioned (and therefore sub­ mitted for the award) by the global ad agency, AKQA. The two designers have also created significant artwork for the Grand Theft Auto series as well as the game series Apex Legends.

Ashley Sabin, BA History of Design ’05, and David Redmon, who has taught at Pratt, recently had their new documentary, Kim’s Video, screened at Sundance, Tribeca, and the Sydney Film Festival. Variety described the film as “a nostalgic meditation on the ultimate hipster video store,” and it was covered by Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, Filmmaker Magazine, and elsewhere. In a feature in The New York Times from March 2022, Redmon describes his part in helping the store’s owner, Youngman Kim, ship his rare video collection from its storage facility in Italy back to the United States.

Rakisha Kearns-White, MSLIS ’04, was recently named a Library Journal 2023 Mover & Shaker, highlighting her work shaping the future of libraries.

She works at the Brooklyn Public

Prattfolio

Chrissy Angliker, BID ’06, partici­ pated in the Dallas Art Fair with Massey Klein Gallery, which presented

Fall 2023

her work alongside that of Bethany Czarnecki and Kate McQuillen.

The work was shown at the Fashion Industry Gallery in the Dallas Arts

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Promotional image for Kim’s Video by Ashley Sabin ’05 and David Redmon, courtesy of Carnivalesque Films

Alumni from the MFA Fine Arts program, including Kate Butler, MFA History of Art and Design; MFA Fine Arts ’19; Guanqi Chen, MFA Fine Arts ’20; Katie Croft, MFA Fine Arts ’20; Naomi Frank, MFA Fine Arts ’18; Devin B. Johnson, MFA Fine Arts ’19; Kosuke Kawahara, MFA Fine Arts ’20; Hiu Ching Leung, MFA Fine Arts ’22; Weijia Lizzy Li, MFA Fine Arts ’17; Samantha Morris, MFA Fine Arts ’22; Jean Oh, MFA Fine Arts ’19; Natalia Devin B. Johnson, Nothing Gold Can Stay, 2023, oil on linen, 48 x 60 inches.

Petkov, MFA Fine Arts Courtesy of the artist and Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles and New York (Sculpture) ’20; Rob Redding, MFA Fine Arts (Painting and Drawing) ’22; and Eric Wangsvick, MFA Fine Arts (Printmaking) ’19, had their work exhibited in the group show There Is a Certain Slant of Light at Pratt Manhattan Gallery this summer. Curated by Seph Rodney, the exhibition explored the poetic use of light in painting, photography, and multimedia artworks. According to coverage in Hyperallergic, the show aimed to “showcase a sense of buoyant inquiry and insight” by artists who “pay close attention to the interplay, whimsy, and weight of light, capturing its essence in their respective mediums.”

Clockwise from top left: La Maison de Beaumont, photo courtesy of Niki Shah-Hosseini ’06. Cover of Archiprint: The Architectural Issue, courtesy of Adrian Volz ’11. Dana Bazzi ’13. John Chaich ’11 with his Queer Threads installation, courtesy of James Dewrance Photography

designs to improve their community and establish a core sense of place in the City of Denver.”

District, where a VIP viewing on Thursday, April 20, 2023, was held before the public opening on April 21. As noted in the press release, the artists “share a deep engagement with their materials, using divergent methods to achieve equally intense yet contrasting surface imagery and quality that emphasizes the con­ ceptual strongholds of each artist’s practice.”

Niki Shah-Hosseini, MFA Interior Design ’06, opened La Maison de Beaumont in the South of France and launched an artist residency program.

After graduating from Pratt, she worked for several years as an exhibit designer and as a residential interior designer in New York City. In 2020, after almost four years of gut reno­ vation, she and her husband opened the La Maison de Beaumont in the South of France, where they start­ ed their artist residency program.

Shah-Hosseini describes it as “a multidisciplinary residency that was created with the goal of offer­ ing a beautiful space for musicians, scholars, writers, painters, and other artists who seek a quiet place to work undisturbed on their art.” Learn more at lamaisondebeaumont.com.

2010s John Chaich, MFA Communications Design ’11, curated Queer Threads for the San Jose Museum of Quilts

and Textiles in California. On view from May 12 to August 20, 2023, the exhibition featured more than three dozen works, spanning five decades,

by LGBTQIA+ fiber and textile artists rooted in and working in the American West, Northwest, and Southwest. Queer Threads debuted at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York City in 2014 and traveled to MICA and the Boston Center for the Arts in 2016. Chaich is a visiting instructor in Pratt’s Graduate Com­ munications Design program.

Adrian Shirk, BFA Writing ’11, Ad­ junct Associate Professor (CCE) of Writing, recently hosted an event at Pratt titled “Alumnitopia,” which she described as “a Writing Depart­ ment–sponsored open-house alumni gathering in the newly renovated Cannoneer Court Writing Dept. head­ quarters.” The May 20 event featured a communal conversation about pub­ lishing and other paths for writing majors as well as a display of alumni publications. Current BFA Writing student Katie Vogel and Acting Chair of the Writing Department Claire Donato assisted with the event.

April Maxey, BFA Film ’12, received a 2023 Sundance Women to Watch x Adobe Fellowship, selected along with seven other fellows for their “exceptional talent and commitment to furthering their creative practice.”

The fellowship includes a grant and access to skill- and career-building resources. Maxey’s short film Work screened at Sundance, Tribeca, Palm Springs Shortfest, Inside Out, and Outfest. Developed at American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women program, the film won the Grand Jury Prize for Outstanding US Narrative Short at Outfest. Maxey’s work “explores the complexities of queer intimacy, grief, and healing.”

(Sundance Institute) Dana Bazzi, MArch ’13, has recently been promoted to the title of senior associate at ELS Architecture and Urban Design. She joined the Berke­ ley, California–based architecture and planning firm in 2017, and has experience on various building types including commercial, hospitality, and retail. Bazzi’s work includes the historic renovation of the Hotel Pres­ ident in Palo Alto, Redwood City’s Veterans Memorial Senior Center, and UC Berkeley’s Recreational Sports Facility Universal Locker Room.

Robert Weinstein, MSLIS ’14, was recently named a Library Journal 2023 Mover & Shaker, highlighting his work shaping the future of libraries.

He works at the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), and “was hired to get the library’s bookmobiles back up and running using an all-outdoor bookmobile service model . . . BPL’s bookmobiles were back in service within three months, and service branched out to churches, parks, community centers, and closed branches.” (Library Journal)

Adrian Volz, BFA Communications Design with Honors (Graphic Design) ’11, is a Colorado-based architect and researcher who recently had his in­ dependent research and design proj­ ect—a newspaper titled Archiprint: The Architectural Issue—featured in two local Denver publications: Modern in Denver and the Denver Public Library newsletter. As stated in Modern in Denver, Volz “embarked on in­ dependent research efforts in which he rediscovered prominent architects who developed outstanding building

Class Notes

57

York Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture & Design teaching de­ sign fundamentals and visualization.

Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez, BFA Communications Design (Illustra­ tion) ’17, wrote and illustrated Benito Juárez Fights for Justice, which was released in August 2023 from Macmil­ lan. The book tells the story of Benito Juárez, a man who devoted himself to his country and became president of Mexico. Following Juárez from his childhood to his career in politics, the author has called her work “a story of hope and determination.”

John A. Doria, AIA, NCARB, BArch ’16, recently opened 1020 Archi­ tecture, PC, his own architecture practice based out of Long Island, New York. Doria is currently working on residential projects with plans to expand into other building types.

Before opening his practice, Doria’s work experience included an intern­ ship for Walt Disney Imagineering, employment with architect-led de­ sign-builders at Gluck+, and work as an architectural designer at STV, Inc. and Handel Architects. Doria will be balancing his new practice with his work as an adjunct professor at New

Cougar Vigil, MFA Photography ’18, had his work included in two group exhibitions recently. The first, a group show titled Southwest Contemporary’s 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023 at 516 Arts in New Mexico, explained how the photographer “integrates multiplicities of perspec­ tives into his work about Indigenous narratives, perspectives, and knowl­ edge systems.” The second show, which was on view at Mud Kin in

Prattfolio

Fall 2023

Los Angeles, is titled Mapping Adobe & Land-based Indigenous & Latinx Projects from Southern California to West Texas. Vigil’s work can be seen on Instagram at @ndoivigil.

2020s Maxfield Biggs, BFA Film ’20, screened their animated short film, Dog Years, in New York City at the Rooftop Films Festival at Brooklyn Commons Park on August 3, and at the Junk Dump Film Festival at

58

Clockwise from top left: Sabrina Nacmias ’15, designs by Faire Type. Cover of Benito Juárez Fights for Justice by Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez ’17. Maxfield Biggs ’20, poster for Dog Years. Akiva Listman ’21, Apples to Oranges.

Cougar Vigil ’18, at 516 Arts with Our Last Chants, 2023, cyanotype, fabric on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

Sabrina Nacmias, BFA Communica­ tions Design (Graphic Design) ’15, re­ cently launched a type foundry, Faire Type, in Brooklyn, New York. With rigorous attention to every detail, Faire Type’s catalog is built on the foundations of historical knowledge, formal exploration, and exact tech­ nical and technological execution. In addition to retail fonts, Faire Type also partners with studios and agen­ cies to craft bespoke typefaces for brands and organizations. Nacmias and her partner at Faire Type were recently named 2023 TDC Ascenders, a recognition for emerging designers who are elevating the medium of type.

Film alumnus Owen Kline released his debut film, Funny Pages, through A24 on August 26, 2023. The film, produced in part by the acclaimed filmmaking duo Josh and Benny Safdie, tells a coming-ofage story of a young comic book artist encountering dubious characters on his way to making his passion a career. In a review in The New York Times, the film was praised for subverting “the norms of packaged industrial entertainment” in order to embrace the humanity of Kline’s cast, in all of their “sweaty, wrinkly, frizzy, rheumy, combover, tender glory.” The film was also praised

by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Times (UK), Rolling Stone, TIME, and other major publications.

On September 22, 2022, Kline spoke to Pratt’s Film/Video Department about his forthcoming Poster for Funny Pages, courtesy of A24 film as well as his short film Jazzy for Joe (2016) and his work as an actor in The Squid and the Whale (2005).

Fellow alumnus Rick Altergott, BFA Film ’83, the acclaimed alternative cartoonist behind the long-running comic strip Doofus, provided original artwork for the film. (@prattfilm_video) the Museum of the Moving Image on August 5. The film premiered this past spring in Finland as part of the S Creatives Festival, and will be playing in the ONED Festival at the Moxuyou Factory Art Space in Beijing this fall.

MTA’s official Instagram account. The painting, which features three classic MTA seats in orange and red on a white background, garnered more than 2,000 likes after only two days online. (@MTA)

Akiva Listman, BFA Fine Arts (Paint­ ing) ’21, recently had his painting, Apples to Oranges, posted on the

Yessenia Sanchez, BFA Film ’21, had her thesis short film, Double Cultura, selected as one of the winners of

Class Notes

HBO Max’s Latino Short Film Com­ petition. As one of seven filmmakers to win the award, she will have the opportunity to have her film stream on HBO Max for a year. In Sanchez’s words, her current projects “focus on the intersectionality of Latine/x experiences to showcase the artistry and versatility of multiculturalism.” (@PalanteMax)

59

Ben Matusow, MS Sustainable Environmental Systems ’22, recently had his work and ideas covered in Gothamist. The article explores how Matusow, who is an urban planner, had the idea to “transform all the roofs of bus stops into urban gardens to sop up rainwater” while com­ pleting his master’s at Pratt. In the article, Matusow is quoted saying that the “most important thing I found is there are opportunities everywhere to improve the sustainability of the city and the world . . . Basically, whenever you look into any city agency project there’s always an opportunity to make it greener.” (Gothamist) Olivia Noss, BFA Photography ’22, received a Fulbright US Student Program award for the 2023–2024 ac­ ademic year from the US Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. This year, she is working in Berlin to bring awareness to a lesbian burial ground in the Lutheran Georgen Parochial Cemetery through portraiture and audio archiving as part of her project “Paying Homage: Queer Lineage, Legacy and Spiritual Remembrance.”

Her ensuing work will be presented in a photobook to be displayed at the Schwules Museum and the Pratt Institute photography gallery. (pratt.edu/news) Anna Sergeeva, MSLIS ’22, opened a new bookstore, Dear Friend Books, while completing her studies at Pratt.

The shop, which New York Magazine described as “focusing on interna­ tional magazines, Japanese statio­ nery, used art, and philosophy and poetry books,” has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue, and else­ where. The store also offers a selec­ tion of natural wines, teas, and other beverages. (New York Magazine) Marley Trigg Stewart, BFA Photo­ graphy ’22, has a major feature in the 50th issue of MATTE, the maga­ zine of the photography publishing imprint of the same name. The issue is exclusively dedicated to highlighting the work of both Trigg Stewart and David Campany. Trigg Stewart is a Brooklyn-based artist who, in 2020, was awarded the Made in NYC Photography Fellowship. (@prattphotography) Yi Xiong, BFA Film ’22, had his film A Tortoise’s Year of Fate screened at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, held this past August in Locarno, Swit­ zerland. The short film, on a factory worker longing for hope, was Xiong’s thesis film at Pratt.

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Fall 2023

Jamie Kyung Min Oh, MPS Arts and Cultural Management ’23; Chang Liu, MPS Arts and Cultural Management ’23; Xin Yan, BFA Interior Design ’21; and Jacqueline Marino, MPS Arts and Cultural Management ’21, com­ posed a team that won the Student Notable Prize from the Core77 Design Awards, an annual design award ceremony. Their project, “Haenyeo Hatchery,” resulted in the design of a “an aquaculture system that ensures the repopulation of shellfish stocks in the oceans surrounding Jeju Island” of South Korea, in order to preserve the livelihood of Haenyeo divers who harvest seafood in the area. Team member Kyung Min Oh believes that “this is a project that re­ flects Pratt and its students’ passion for making positive social changes through arts and culture.” (Core77)

Submission guidelines: Send submissions of up to 100 words to classnotes@pratt.edu. Please include your full name, degree or program, and graduation year.

Submissions will be edited for length, clarity, and style. Image submissions should be high resolution (300 dpi at 5 x 7 inches).

60

John Denniston II ’22, Romantique, 2023, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 inches (top). Yi Xiong ’22, poster for A Tortoise’s Year of Fate

John Denniston II, MFA Fine Arts (Painting) ’22, recently had four of his paintings featured on Platform, an online marketplace backed by David Zwirner. As a feature of his work being highlighted, these paintings were included as part of a two-person exhibition at Swivel Gallery that ran from June 7 to June 30, 2023.

The show, titled Platform by David Zwirner, presented Denniston’s work along with work by Whit Harris and highlights the artist’s inventive and multilayered portraits.

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In Memoriam

Alumni Eleanor C. Dreskin

Certificate, Illustration ’46 Rita Edwards

Judith Draper Martin

Certificate, Illustration ’52; BFA Illustration ’53 Doris B. Nelsen

Certificate, Costume Design ’47

Certificate, Advertising Design ’53

Dorothea Gerjovich DeVoe

Emilie Adams

BFA Art Education ’48

Jeanne Marie Raciborski

BS Food Science and Management ’54

BFA Communications Design (Illustration) ’48

Benjamin Kowalchuk

Debora K. Reiser

Mary Wallis Gutmann

Marie L. McCormack

August Lebkuecher

Ernest A. Vigdor

Robert Eugene Berner

BArch ’48

BS Home Economics ’49 Certificate, Advertising Design ’49 David Broad

BEE ’55 BID ’56

BEE ’56

Industrial Design (1954–1957) Edward K. McCabe

Pratt Institute remembers the community members we have recently lost, through early October 2023.

Edward Lamkay

BArch ’59

John Ryan

Mechanical Technology Design (1956–1959) Elizabeth L. Beadle

MLS ’60

Phyllis Feld

Interior Design (1958–1960) Alfred Heiler

BME ’60

Thomas William Mulvey

Architecture (1955–1960) Nubar L. Shahbazian

BArch ’60

Meroojan Mellian

AAS Building and Construction ’61

Certificate, Illustration ’50

Certificate, Electrical Tech Power ’57

Beverly Morotwitz Warmath

Richard E. Swarts

Joseph George Shannon

C. Robert Helms

Howard I. Chechik

Norman L. Wax

Charles V. Walt

Margaret A. Santacroce

Herbert G. Anderson

Veronica E. Johnson

Donald J. Schwarz

George Brody

Daniel Steppe

Marguerite D. Valenti

Ron Emmerling

Robert A. Freese Sr.

BME ’50 BCE ’52

Certificate, Retailing ’52 BID ’52

BFA Merchandising and Fashion Management ’52 William L. Border

Certificate, Illustration ’53 Ruth M. Fowler

Certificate, Advertising Design ’53 Robert Lacava

Evening Art School, Illustration (1952–1953)

Advertising Art (1951–1957) BArch ’57 BEE ’58

BCE ’58 BID ’58

Mary Ann Dionne

BFA Fashion Design ’59 C. Fred Grimsey Jr.

BME ’59

Henry Halpern

MLS ’59

Alan D. Jacobus

BArch ’59

BFA Fashion Design ’61 BID ’62

Foundation Art (1962) MLS ’63 BCE ’63

BFA Communications Design (Graphic Arts and Illustration) ’64 Edward Koren

MFA Art Education ’64 Cheryl Lynne Sims

Fashion Design (1963–1964) Nancy J. Bodine

BS Art Education ’65 Paul W. Bruner

MFA Art Education ’68

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Fall 2023

62

Faculty

Sandra B. Schwartz

Beth A. Portuesi

Margery Scott Daniels

Paula Burksy

MSLIS ’86

former faculty member in the School of Architecture

Thomas Kochie

Virginia P. Dawe

Dimitri Hazzikostas

Malcolm Lanphear

Anne Cowin Fahey

MFA Fine Arts ’69

BFA Fashion Merchandising ’70 BFA Fine Arts ’70 BFA Advertising Design and Visual Communications ’70

BFA Communications Design ’83

MSLIS ’86

BFA Communications Design ’87 Patricia Caputo

Myron Goldfinger

former assistant professor of History of Art and Design and faculty member of Pratt in Venice Albert Lorenz, BArch ’65

BArch ’70

Communications Design (1986–1990)

former longtime faculty member in the School of Architecture, Distinguished Teacher 1989–1990

Charles A. Quinn

Vashti Davidson-Clarke

Woody Rainey

Gregory F. Brazaitis

Matthew D. Sylvester

Paul Nocella

Inger Erickson

Joseph L. Aversano Jr.

Mark M. Mendlovsky

Christopher Laux

BA Social Science ’70 BME ’71 BEE ’72

BFA Merchandising and Fashion Design ’73 Susan R. Burdick

MSLIS ’73

David S. Ferebee Jr.

MSLIS ’90

BFA Painting ’92

BFA Art Education ’93

pratt.edu/those-we-have-lost

BFA Communications Design (Advertising/Art Direction) ’97, alumni volunteer

Lorie Hansen-Boveroux

Robert D. Zera

Elizabeth Drago

Evelyn A. Nilsen

Knina Magnani Strichartz

Elizabeth Thompson

MFA Fine Arts ’77

Glenn A. Roopchand

AOS Illustration ’79 Stephan Green

BArch ’80

Heidi S. Holliger

MSLIS ’81

Hanford Yang

Beck Lynn Krajcir

Norma Heller

BS Nutrition and Dietetics ’77

former assistant professor in the School of Information former faculty member in the School of Architecture

Susan Hoskins Peterson

BID ’74

David Walczyk

BArch ’93

Fashion Merchandising, Interior Design (1970–1973) MSLIS ’74

former longtime faculty member of Interior Design

Creative Arts Therapy (1998–2000) MS City and Regional Planning ’01 BFA Photography ’05 Critical and Visual Studies (2007–2008) Kathleen Farrell Hefty

MS History of Art ’13

Ryan Thoresen Carson

BFA Writing ’14

Ariana J. Dillon

Undergraduate Architecture (2020–2023)

In Memoriam

63

Spotlight

Prattfolio

to realize it in a sequence of working processes that then can become generative and leads to the potential of the making of a collection of pieces and eventually the making of space.”

This past spring, Jin and her students across four semesters presented hand-crafted pieces developed in Family of Things in the exhibition Ebb and Flow, held in the Juliana Curran Terian Design Center Gallery on Pratt’s Brooklyn campus.

Along with the finished work, layered within the space were sketches, work-in-progress photos, and 36 woodblocks made in the School of Design woodshop that showed “the potential textures, tectonics, and forms one can achieve in the shop,” with the students’ work as inspiration.

Fall 2023

The show’s curation highlighted the exhibition—together, experimenting critical thinking, calculation, testing, with the core concept “of the diaproblem-solving, and revision that logue through making [. . .] each are all part of “making things.” addressing their respective field of The exhibition itself was despecialty/design focus.” signed with these ideas in mind, to In Ebb and Flow, as both an en­ evoke the fluctuations and ebbvironment and a collection of and-flow motion of the iterative pro- works, the creation story behind cess, in the arrangement of the obour things perhaps mirrors the way jects and visuals and in the layout we make our space in the world. of the space. Shifting air gently “Creativity flows from the constant moved the hung work, for example, dialogue between the hands and and a corner area invited visitors the eyes, and it is not always agreeto pause and have a conversation able discussions, it could be arguor reflect. ments, disagreement, or even Jin describes the total curato­ temporarily unresolvable conflicts,” rial project as “a meeting of differ­ Jin said. “Design is the outcome ent fields,” with four students* of of the back-and-forth decisions inte­rior design, industrial design, addressing this beautiful tension.” and communications design col­ laborating with her to realize the Read more at pratt.edu/prattfolio.

64

Photo courtesy of Gweny Jin. *Katy O’Connor, MFA Interior Design ’24; Manasi Danayak, MFA Communications Design ’24; Marisa Rapezzi, MFA Interior Design ’24; and Shengbai Luo, MID ’23, worked with Jin on Ebb and Flow, with support from the School of Design Dean’s Office assistantship fund.

It was often called a furnituremaking class, but instructor Gweny Jin both agreed and disagreed. “I would rather call it the class of ‘making things,’” Jin said in an overview of Family of Things, the Interior Options Lab she taught during her time as the Pratt Institute Interior Design Department’s AICAD Fellow, from 2021 through spring 2023.

(AICAD—the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design— postgraduate fellows spend up to two years gaining teaching experience at a sponsoring school such as Pratt.)

“The idea of ‘Family of Things’ is for [students] to not only discover their unique linguistic solution to their individual style, taste, and design intent,” Jin continued, “but also

Ebb and Flow A class and an exhibition explore the making of the objects we live with.

“

To this day, I walk around on campus and I’m still shocked that I’m here.

Becoming a Pratt student was a dream I didn’t think was possible.

When I received the email that I was a scholarship recipient, I cried. Pratt showed me they really wanted me here, and I couldn’t believe it!

Pratt has offered me so much and it’s been an explosion of knowledge I didn’t know I could access. Thank you so much for this opportunity.”

Angela Orozco ‘24 BFA Digital Arts Animation, School of Design

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About the cover With Whittle, Kaytlin Bronson’s senior showcase at Pratt, the objects and physical details of a home reflect both interior life and a sense of self in the world.

Kaytlin Bronson, BFA Photography ’23 Untitled (Whittle), 2023

Pratt alumni: Who was your Pratt mentor?

Tell us about a professor who helped you find your path, for possible inclusion in our Spring 2024 issue.

Email prattfolio@pratt.edu with the subject line MENTORSHIP.

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