Sean Canty of Studio Sean Canty

Sean Canty founded his eponymous studio in Boston in 2017. The studio engages in geometrical explorations, asking social questions of traditional housing typologies and architectural forms. In its own words, Studio Sean Canty aims “to help establish a new normal in residential design, one that foregrounds collectivity, communal living, and higher density.” Through spatial contortions and remixes, Canty’s designs embrace both the social and formal tensions internal to each project. 

Recent projects include:

• Crown House, a home with a reconfigurable plan whose design draws inspiration from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s crown motif. Developed with Studio J.Jih.
• Block, House, Commons, a proposal for a place of memorial and collective living on the Philadelphia city block that once housed the Black Liberation organization MOVE 
• Folly Pavilion, an adaptable gathering space that embeds a conical turret within an open shed.

Sean Canty holds a BArch from California College of the Arts and an MArch from Harvard University GSD, where he currently teaches. 

Canty received a 2023 Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been shown at The Cooper Union, The School of Architecture (TSOA), a83, Harvard University GSD, and University of Colorado Denver. Canty is participating in the 2023 Venice Biennale. 

Canty is also a founding principal of Office III, an experimental architecture collective. Office III was a finalist for the 2017 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program.

Learn more about Studio Sean Canty

• New New York Architects: Sean Canty, Activist, Architect, Educator, PIN-UP
• An Architectural Designer Made a List of 200 Black Creatives You Should Follow, Curbed
• Ordinary, Except, USC School of Architecture