The Student Program offers an inside look at the architectural profession. The program highlights the varied and creative career paths open to graduates of architecture school.

The day includes

– A panel discussion featuring Josh de Sousa, Principal and Co-Founder, Hou de Sousa; Jean Brownhill, Founder and CEO, Sweeten; and Adamo Garritano, Senior Associate, SHoP Architects.
– Afternoon studio tours with KPF, Leong Leong, Perkins+Will, Rockwell Group, SCAPE Landscape Architecture, SHoP Architects, Snøhetta, Studio Gang, Thomas Phifer and Partners and OMA New York.
– An end of the day reception at the office of Robert A.M. Stern Architects.

Panelists

Josh de Sousa received a B.Arch from Cornell and a M.Arch from Harvard University. He worked at Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Joel Sanders Architect, and Simone Giostra and Partners before co-founding Hou de Sousa in 2010 with Nancy Hou in Quito, Ecuador. Based in New York since 2014, the studio has designed and built a range of projects, including restaurants, public spaces, private residences, and art installations.

Projects currently under construction include a residential renovation in Quito and a juice bar in Lima. In 2016 the studio’s proposal Sticks was the winner of the Folly/Function competition co-sponsored by The Architectural League and Socrates Sculpture Park. In 2015 their interior for Happy Panda in Quito was the winner of the IIDA Best Interior of Latin America Competition in the Best Restaurant category. In 2016 the studio was featured as “Firm to Watch” in Architectural Record.

After receiving a B.Arch from Cooper Union, Jean Brownhill spent a decade working for design and construction firms before starting her own company. In 2011 she founded Sweeten together with Preeti Sriratana and Sherataun Nuss. As a reference to “home, sweet home,” the company provides a free service that matches people to vetted general contractors in order to facilitate renovation projects. The concept earned Jean a Loeb Fellowship from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. She is also the co-founder of the African American Student Union (AASU) at Harvard, an organization supporting African Americans in architecture, real estate, and urban planning.

Apart from setting new standards for contractors, Jean is also taking on traditional barriers for diversity and women in technology. Today, Sweeten has nearly $500M of residential and commercial projects in the pipeline, serving New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. Recent renovation projects include Fool’s Gold store in Brooklyn (by Dong-Ping Wong, Family New York); Shapiro townhouse in Brooklyn (by C. Wall Architecture); and Liu/Meagher residence in Manhattan (by Kate Meagher and Arthur Liu).

Adamo Garritano graduated from the University of Toronto with a M.Arch and a B.A. in Architecture and Art History. A Senior Associate at SHoP, Garritano has been instrumental in the design of the ten-story residential building on 475 West 18^th Street, which recently won the US Tall Wood Building Prize from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Garritano is currently working on the National Veterans Resource Complex (NVRC) at Syracuse University, a mixed-use project combining office space, classrooms, a gallery and auditorium.

Before joining SHoP, Garritano was a designer at Renzo Piano Building Worshop, where he was involved in the conception and construction of the Whitney Museum of Art. He also has taught a seminar on façade design at Princeton University.

Studio Tours

Founded in 1976 by Eugene Kohn, William Pedersen, and Sheldon Fox, KPF is based in New York City, with offices in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Abu Dhabi. The firm designs a range of corporate, institutional, cultural, and residential projects. According to KPF, the aspirations that shape their design include optimizing programmatic functions, strengthening the urban context, promoting sustainable environments, and advancing the commercial success of development strategies. These priorities have informed a wide variety of projects, including the Shanghai World Financial Center and the tower at 10 Hudson Yards in New York City, the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University, the Rodin Gallery in Seoul, and the Midfield Terminal Concourse at Abu Dhabi International Airport.

For its extensive work in the United States and abroad, KPF won ten AIA National Chapter Awards, as well as recognition from the Urban Land Institute, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the World Architecture Festival, and many others.

Founded by brothers Dominic and Chris Leong in 2009, Leong Leong envisions “new relationships between culture and commerce, public and private, figure and field, domestic and monumental, diagram and effect.” With offices in New York and Los Angeles, the firm designed buildings, interiors, exhibitions, and furniture.

The firm has completed projects in New York, Los Angeles, Napa Valley, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Venice, including the City View Garage in Miami; the 3.1 Philip Lim flagship store in Seoul; the U.S. Pavilion for the 14^th Venice Architecture Biennale; and a workspace for Triple Canopy in New York. Current projects include the Center for Community and Entrepreneurship in Queens, New York; the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Anita May Rosenstein Campus in Hollywood, California (in association with Killefer Flammang Architects); a mixed-use development Block Garden in Yangon, Myanmar; and an exhibition design for the Bass Museum in Miami. In 2017, Leong Leong was one of the winners of The Architectural League’s Emerging Voices Award.

Founded in 1935 by Lawrence Perkins and Philip Will in Chicago, Perkins+Will today operates 20 offices and 10 research centers worldwide. With expertise in sustainability, resilience, health and wellness, and mobility, the firm has amassed a portfolio of work that includes a range of institutional, commercial, residential, and planning projects.

In recent years, Perkins+Will completed projects such as the New York Police Academy in Queens, NY; the State University of New York University at Albany School of Business in Albany, NY; the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford in Palo Alto, CA; and the Sail Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Current projects include a residential tower on 12 East 37^th Street in New York City; Hartford Hospital’s Bone & Joint Institute in Hartford, CT; and Cornell University’s Upson Hall in Ithaca, NY.

Founded in 1984 by David Rockwell, Rockwell Group is a 250-person interdisciplinary architecture and design firm based in New York with a satellite office in Madrid. Inspired by theater, technology, and high-end craft, the firm has designed restaurants, hotels, airport terminals, hospitals, festivals, exhibitions, furniture, and sets for major Broadway theater productions.

Among Rockwell Group’s projects are restaurants including Union Square Café, Daily Provisions, Nobu Downtown, and Avra Madison in New York; the TED Theater in Vancouver; the hotel Dream Hollywood in Los Angeles, Nobu hotels in Las Vegas, Miami, Manilla, and Riyadh, and W Hotels in New York, Paris, Madrid, Singapore, and Vieques; set designs for the theater production of She Loves Me, Falsettos, Kinky Boots, Hairspray, and Catch Me if You Can; as well as the entrance installation for the 11^th Venice Architecture Biennale. Projects under construction include The Shed (in collaboration with Diller Scofidio + Renfro) in New York and the visual identity and interiors for the new Brightline train stations in Florida.

The firm recently received an AIANY President’s Award, a Tony Award for Best Scenic Design for She Loves Me and a NYCxDESIGN Award for Nobu Downtown in 2017.

SCAPE is a New York-based landscape architecture and urban design studio founded by Kate Orff and Elena Brescia in 2007. Based on the belief that “landscape architecture can enable positive change in communities through the creation of regenerative living infrastructure and public landscapes,” the studio works in all scales, from urban pocket-parks to regional ecological plans. Their projects aim to connect people to their immediate environment and create dynamic and adaptive landscapes.

Recent projects include the Blake Hobbs Play-za in New York; the Living Breakwaters Design and Implementation in Staten Island, NY; the Red Hoek Point office campus in Brooklyn, NY; and the landscape design for Columbia University’s Vagelos Education Center in New York. Current projects include The Gowanus Lowlands in Brooklyn, NY; the First Avenue Water Plaza in New York; and the Midtown Center Plaza in Washington, D.C.

The studio was the recipient of the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Award and was recognized with two national American Society of Landscape Architects awards as well as several NY American Society of Landscape Architects awards.

Based in New York, SHoP Architects employs a process-driven approach to architectural design and construction. Founded in 1996, SHoP is headed by seven principals, with a staff of 180 architects, designers, engineers, and project managers. The firm’s range of services includes planning, architecture, and interior design. SHoP’s educational and professional experience encompasses architecture, fine arts, structural engineering, finance, and business management. The firm aims to address a broad range of issues in their designs: “from novel programmatic concepts, to next-generation fabrication and delivery techniques, to beautifully crafted spaces that precisely suit their functions.”

SHoP’s New York projects include Barclays Center in Brooklyn, American Copper Buildings, Pier 15, South Street Seaport mixed-use development, and Porter House in Manhattan. Current projects include a residential tower at 111 West 57^th Street in New York; the Uber headquarters in San Francisco; a commercial building on Pier 17 in Lower Manhattan; as well as the Domino Sugar Refinery master plan (in collaboration with Field Operations) in Brooklyn.

Recent awards include the Public Design Commission Award for Excellence in Design; the 2016 Design Miami/Design Visionary Award for the installation Flotsam and Jetsam; and the National Academy Distinguished Achievement Award from 2016.

Established in 1989 with the competition-winning entry for the new library of Alexandria, Egypt, Snøhetta is an architecture, landscape, interior, and brand design firm with headquarters in Oslo and New York. According to the firm, their work “strives to enhance our sense of place, identity and relationship to others and the physical spaces we inhabit, whether feral or human-made.”

Notable past projects include the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York; the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo; the expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in San Francisco; the redesign of Times Square in New York; and the James B. Hunt Jr. Library in Raleigh, NC. Current projects in New York include the Far Rockaway Public Library in Queens and the Westchester Branch Library in the Bronx. Ongoing international projects include the New Central Library in Calgary, Canada and the Le Monde headquarters in Paris.

Snøhetta was recently recognized as the Wall Street Journal 2016 Architecture Innovator of the Year and won the National AIA/ALA Library Building Award for the James B. Hunt Jr. Library in North Carolina and the Mies van der Rohe Award for Contemporary Architecture for The Oslo Opera House. Notable projects include One World Trade Center in New York; Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport – Terminal 2, Mumbai, India; and Denver Union Station, Denver, CO. Current projects include the U.S. Air Force Academy Center for Character & Leadership Development in Colorado Springs, CO and JTI Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Founded by MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang in 1997, Studio Gang is an architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago and New York. Characterized by a design process that “foregrounds the relationships between individuals, communities, and environments,” the studio has experience in a variety of project types. Intertwined with its built work, the studio also develops research and related publications, exhibitions, and programming that push design’s ability to create public awareness and lead to change. This work includes Polis Station, an ongoing project exploring how American police stations can be reimagined through an inclusive design process to better serve their communities; Reverse Effect, an advocacy publication produced to spark a greener future for the Chicago River; and Civic Commons, a multi-city project re-envisioning civic assets across the United States.

Notable built projects include the mixed-use Aqua Tower in Chicago; the Writers Theatre in Glencoe, IL; the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago; WMS Boathouse at Clark Park in Chicago; and the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership in Kalamazoo, MI. Ongoing projects include the expansion of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City; the new U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil; and a unified campus for the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

In 2013 Studio Gang was awarded the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture and in 2017 Founding Principal Jeanne Gang was honored with the Louis I. Kahn Memorial Award.

Thomas Phifer founded Thomas Phifer and Partners in New York in 1997. Since then, the firm has completed residential, commercial, cultural, educational, and governmental projects throughout the United States. The firm has designed the United States Courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah; the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina; the Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion at Rice University in Houston, Texas; and numerous houses in New York. Ongoing projects include the Glenstone Foundation in Potomac, Maryland; the Waterloo Park Performance Pavilion and Waller Creek Pedestrian Bridge in Austin, Texas; and the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw and TR Warzawa Theatre in Poland.

Thomas Phifer and Partners received the 2016 President’s Award from the American Institute of Architects; the 2016 AIANY Merit Award for the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York; and the 2015 AIA National Honor Award for the United States Courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah; among others.

OMA was founded in 1975 in Rotterdam by Rem Koolhaas together with Madeleon Vrisendorp and Elia and Zoe Zenghelis. Currently led by nine partners with offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Perth, and Doha, OMA practices architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis.

OMA New York was established in 2001 and is led by partners Shohei Shigematsu and Jason Long. The office has overseen the completion of several projects across North America, including Faena District in Miami, FL; an extension to the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec in Canada; Milstein Hall at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY; Wyly Theater in Dallas, TX; the Seattle Central Library in Seattle, WA; the IIT Campus Center in Chicago, IL; and Prada’s Epicenter in New York City.

Projects currently under construction include a residential tower on 22^nd Street in New York City; three residential towers in Miami; and a mixed-use tower in San Francisco. OMA is also engaged in several masterplan and public space design projects, including a new urban center in Toronto; a flood resiliency strategy for Hoboken, NJ; and 11^th Street Bridge Park in Washington DC. 

Reception

Founded in 1969 by Robert A.M. Stern, Robert A.M. Stern Architects is a 275-person firm of architects, interior designers, landscape designers, and supporting staff with international experience in residential, commercial, and institutional work. RAMSA is committed “to designing buildings that enter into a conversation across time with their surroundings—a conversation that the firm believes lies at the heart of architecture.”

Completed projects include the residential tower 15 Central Park West in New York; Comcast Center, a 57-story corporate headquarters in Philadelphia; a mixed-use high-rise at 30 Park Place in New York; and the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. Work currently under way includes the Pauli Murray College and Benjamin Franklin College at Yale University in New Haven, CT; the Georgia Judicial Complex in Atlanta, GA; a residential tower at 520 Park Avenue in New York; and a mixed-use development AVIC Jinjiang Uptown in China.