Emerging Voices winner profile

A-I-R

A-I-R | VH R-10 gHouse, Martha's Vineyard, MA, 2007. Credit: Bill Timmerman

The Architectural League’s annual Emerging Voices program spotlights North American architects, landscape architects, and urban designers who have significant bodies of realized work and the potential to influence their field.

A-I-R won a 2009 award.

Darren Petrucci is the founder and principal of A-I-R [Architecture-Infrastructure-Research], Inc., based in Scottsdale, Arizona. His design and research focuses on what he calls “Amenity Infrastructure, which develops new public/private urban infrastructures that facilitate multiple scales of public use within the contemporary city.”

Projects include Stripscape, pedestrian amenities on a commercial avenue in Phoenix; Comfort Zone, shading and cooling canopies for transit and courtesy vehicles at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport; Garden Rooms, streetscape and transit stop improvements in Scottsdale; vh r-10 ghouse, a guest house prototype on Martha’s Vineyard; and Cool Ground, a digitally designed and fabricated furniture/landscape at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Arts.

Petrucci is the winner of a Progressive Architecture award for his project GLUE: Generic Landscapes Urban Environments, a commercial corridor revitalization strategy along Scottsdale Road in Scottsdale, and the NCARB Prize for excellence in teaching and practice for his project Stripscape.

His work has been published in Metropolis, Places Journal, Architecture Magazine, Sprawl, and Public Space published by the National Endowment for the Arts with Princeton Architectural Press, and Re-Envisioning Landscape/Architecture published by Actar Press. His work has been exhibited in Phoenix, New York, and at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Petrucci is the Director of the School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture at Arizona State University, where he also runs his applied research lab: SCAPE (Systems Components Architectural Products + Environments). He received both MArch and MAUD degrees with distinction from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.