Deborah Garcia of DEBORA.STUDIO

Deborah Garcia is an architectural designer and researcher whose work focuses on reimagining everyday structures through multisensory activation. Throughout her often site-specific installations, curatorial work, and research projects, Garcia aims to “investigate the crossed wires of what we hear, the stories we are a part of, and the things we feed back into the system,” in her own words. Her recent research developed strategies for using sound as an architectural medium and historical record.

Recent projects include:

• SUPA SYSTEM, with Joseph Zeal-Henry, Taking formal inspiration from commercial billboards, this modular structure and sound system can be configured in numerous ways to host performances, screenings, and other gatherings.
• RECORDAR This nine-foot-tall tower contains a multi-channel recording and broadcasting sound system. When not activated for live performance, RECORDAR processes its archive of past and present recordings to create a real-time audio experience. 
• RESPONDER This installation and aural performance utilized the RECORDAR tower to record and amplify the synthesized sounds of the buildings systems within the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library in Columbus, Indiana, creating a therapeutic sound bath in the courtyard of the Children’s Entrance.

Deborah Garcia holds a BArch from SCI-Arc and an MArch from Princeton University School of Architecture. She currently teaches at Yale School of Architecture and is the residency director of the Institute for Public Architecture in New York. 

Garcia has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the 2021 Marion Mahony Emerging Practitioner Fellowship from the MIT Department of Architecture and the 2023 Exhibit Columbus University Design Research Fellowship. She has served on the curatorial team for exhibitions including The Drawing Show, shown at A+D Museum in Los Angeles and at Yale School of Architecture, and TOO FAST TOO SLOW at Princeton University. Garcia lectures widely and has published essays and other work in Log, Party Planner, and Archinect. 

Learn more about Deborah Garcia

• Institute for Public Architecture concludes summer 2024 residency with group show hosted by Director Deborah Garcia, Architect’s Newspaper
• 5 Latinas in Architecture, Hunker Magazine
• Joseph Zeal-Henry and Deborah Garcia’s SUPA System is a ‘manifesto made physical,’ Wallpaper*

Support

The Architectural League Prize is made possible by Judlowe, Tischler und Sohn, and Delta Millworks. 

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Support is also provided by the Next Generation Fund, which supports the League’s investment in early-career architects and designers and provides unified support for the League Prize, Emerging Voices, and the League’s Student and Mentorship Programs, and by the J. Clawson Mills Fund of The Architectural League. League Prize public programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.