"Architecture Women @ Pratt" was made on the occasion of International Woman's Day on March 8th, 2020 and was the keynote feature for a dinner event in Brooklyn that brought together professors, architects, designers, writers, recent graduates, current students, staff, and scholars associated with Pratt Institute's School of Architecture. The film is a "day in... Continue Reading →

There's nothing like falling in love with the very thing you initially detested. Two months ago I couldn't think of anything more horrid than teaching a design class through videoconference. Now I plan on keeping the methodologies I developed this semester in my teaching toolbox beyond the COVID-19 crisis. Back in mid March, I sat... Continue Reading →

There are these online "Master Classes" that have been making the rounds on social media for a while, even before our COVID 19 situation. They are a peculiar thing indeed, but even more peculiar was the one that popped up on my screen this week, one taught by a hostage negotiator. And I thought, that's... Continue Reading →

We looked at six-foot boards on our desktop screens, zooming in on a drawing like we were walking up to the print on the wall, sticking our noses in it. We don't have to take turns, all eleven of us "crowding" around the palm-sized detail, on account that we don't have bodies anymore, just ten... Continue Reading →

I could see everybody's ceiling above their faces, that peculiar relation we have in our webcam conversations--we are looking down at our screens and our conversationalists see us hovering above them. It made me think of the video installation "Just Above My Head" by Steve McQueen, which I saw in the late 1990s when I... Continue Reading →

The assignment had been to 3D print 1/16th scale massing models, but we were all distracted by the one printed at 1/32nd scale which in comparison appeared diminutive and made us laugh because it was so, well, cute. Scales only appear to be quantitative; there is, in fact, a sort of feel to each one.... Continue Reading →

Our architecture studio class is designing a middle school and at the beginning of the semester we brainstormed about ways in which to finish this sentence: "A school is/has..." Each student read thirty responses on camera and those nine voices now live together in a virtual drive, even as we have dispersed to Canada, New... Continue Reading →

I'm taking a page from Pietro Franceschini who started a visual diary of his Italian COVID-19 shutdown and starting my own teaching online diary. This is day one of making the impossible happen. A studio and a seminar, 9 + 1 and 10 + 2 people respectively that were reliant on my physical presence to... Continue Reading →