
Faculty & Lecturers
Core Faculty
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Architectural designer and researcher
Alicia Olushola Ajayi is an architectural designer, researcher, writer, and (still trying to figure it out) based in NYC. After receiving a dual masters in architecture and social work from Washington University in St. Louis, Alicia worked as an associate designer at MASS Design Group. There she contributed to the Equal Justice Initiatives Soil Collection exhibition and the ground-breaking Memorial to Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, a site dedicated to the racial terror and lynching throughout US history.
She graduated from the SVA MA Design Research, Writing and Criticism program in 2020. At SVA, she refined her research practice to be rooted in historical research and cultural theory applications. Ajayi is currently documenting and researching Brooklyn, IL, the first Black American town to be incorporated by 1829. Situated along the Mason-Dixon line, Brooklyn’s past offers a rich history of the external ideologies and internal motivations that created radical Black spatial conditions. The study of Brooklyn and other antebellum Black settlements offer a critical understanding of Black place-making in American history. The research is supported by the School of Visual Arts Alumni Association (2019), the New York State Art Council on the Arts (2019), and the Architectural League’s Deborah J. Norden Travel Grant (2020). Ajayi’s article “We Call It Freedom Village: Brooklyn, Illinois’ Radical Tactics of Black Place-making” can be read here.
Ajayi’s practice incorporates multiple writing forms from scholarly to commentary to experimental. Her work is featured in The New York Architecture in Review, PIN-UP Magazine, Metropolis, Architectural Record, The Architectural Review, Dear Friend, and The Funambulist. Ajayi serves on the advisory board of Oculus Magazine. She is the show producer for the upcoming podcast Curious Story Lab, an interview platform hosted by influential graphic designer Michele Washington, spotlighting designers of color. Ajayi is also the project manager at BlackSpace Urbanist Collective, a group of design professionals dedicated to protect and create Black spaces.
She co-teaches Approaches to Design History, Part II with Jon Key in the Fall Semester.
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Architect and author
An architect and an author, Margaret Arbanas has worked on projects ranging from books to exhibitions to buildings to cities. Educated at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Arbanas joined Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam and New York in 2003, where she was responsible for a number of projects in Europe, US and China. Highlights from her time at OMA include visual identity design for the European Union, content development for the exhibition The Image of Europe, timeline design for OMA’s retrospective exhibition and publication Content, and design of Cornell University’s new school of architecture. She returned to Harvard in 2009 to co-lead Koolhaas’ master thesis cohort in 2008.
In 2009 Arbanas started her own practice, collaborating with numerous cultural institutions such as Guggenheim Museum , Harvard University, and Pentagram. Her work has been featured in the Venice Biennale of Architecture and various publications.
Arbanas was awarded grants from the Graham Foundation and American Institute of Architects to relocate to Cuba and research the 1959 revolution’s impact on architecture and culture. She is also the recipient of the Balokovic Scholarship from Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
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MA Design Research Program Chair; editor in chief Oculus magazine
Molly Fulghum Heintz is the Program Chair of the SVA MA Design Research program and the editor in chief of Oculus, the quarterly magazine of the American Institute of Architects, New York. She is a co-founder of the editorial consultancy Superscript and has served as the firm’s managing director since 2012. With Superscript, she has collaborated on strategy, research, and writing projects for a range of design organizations and institutions, including Pentagram, the Museum of Modern Art, and Rockwell Group, in addition to producing conversation series for the Museum of Arts and Design, the Venice Architectural Biennale, and the Oslo Architecture Triennial. Prior to Superscript, Heintz led communications departments at the architecture firms Gensler and Rockwell Group and was a fellow at the Philip Johnson Glass House, where she helped launch the interactive site “Glass House Conversations.” She holds BAs in Classics and Archaeology from Duke University, an MFA in Design Criticism from the School of Visual Arts, and an MA in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University, where her PhD research focuses on narratives attached to design objects. Heintz has edited multiple books and magazines, and is a contributor to Design Observer, Fast Company magazine and The Architect’s Newspaper. Her writing has also appeared in The Art Newspaper, AIGA Voice, and Studies in the Decorative Arts, among other publications.
Her current research focuses on design and disinformation, and she presented a related paper, “The Role of Design in the Creation of Fake News,” at the 2018 College Art Association Conference in Los Angeles.
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Co-chair MFA Design / Designer as Author + Entrepreneur
Steven Heller is the co-chair of the SVA MFA Design / Designer as Author + Entrepreneur program and the SVA Masters Workshop in Rome. He writes the Visuals column for The New York Times Book Review, a weekly column for The Atlantic online and The Daily Heller / Imprint online. He has written more than 160 books on graphic design, illustration and political art, including The Design Entrepreneur (with Lita Talarico), Paul Rand, Merz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century, Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design, Citizen Designer, Stylepedia: A Guide to Graphic Design Mannerisms, Quirks, and Conceits (with Louise Fili), The Anatomy of Design: Uncovering the Influences and Inspirations in Modern Graphic Design, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State and 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design. He is a contributing editor for Print, Baseline, Design Observer, and Eye. Heller is the recipient of the Art Directors Club Special Educators Award, the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement, the School of Visual Arts’ Masters Series Award and the 2011 National Design Award for “Design Mind.”
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Professional observer of the manmade landscape
Karrie Jacobs is a professional observer of the manmade landscape. Her recent writing has appeared in Curbed, the New York Times, and the MIT Technology Review. She has been a columnist for Metropolis and a contributing editor for Travel + Leisure, Architect, House + Garden and Metropolitan Home. Jacobs was also the founding editor-in-chief of Dwell, the architecture critic of New York Magazine, and the founding executive editor of Benetton’s Colors. She is the author of The Perfect $100,000 House: A Trip Across America and Back in Pursuit of a Place to Call Home (Viking, 2006).
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Writer and editor
Jennifer Kabat’s The Eighth Moon on a 1840s socialist uprising in her town will be published by Milkweed Editions in Spring 2024. Half of a diptych, the second volume Nightshining will come out in 2025. Her work has been supported by numerous grants including a Silvers Foundation Grant and a Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her criticism. Her essays have appeared in BOMB, Granta, Frieze, McSweeney’s, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, LARB, New York Review, 4 Columns and the White Review and been anthologized in Best American Essays. She often collaborates with artists and contributes to museum catalogues. An apprentice herbalist, she lives in rural upstate New York and serves on her volunteer fire department.
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Publisher, New York Review of Architecture
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Artist and designer
Jon(athan) Key is an artist, designer, and writer originally from Seale, Alabama. After receiving his BFA from RISD, Jon began his design career at Grey Advertising in NYC before moving on to work with HBO, Nickelodeon, and The Public Theater. Now he is co-founder of the Brooklyn–based design studio Morcos Key with Wael Morcos. As an educator, Jon has taught at MICA, Parsons, and currently teaches at Cooper Union and SVA. Jon is also a Co-Founder and Design Director of Codify Art, a multidisciplinary collective dedicated to creating, producing, supporting, and showcasing work by artists of color, particularly women, queer, and trans artists of color. Jon was selected for Forbes 30 under 30 Art and Style list for 2020 and was the Frank Staton Chair in Graphic Design at Cooper Union 2018-2019. His work has been featured in Jeffery Deitch Gallery NYC, the Armory Show, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic.
He holds an MA in Design Research, Writing and Criticism from SVA (Class of 2021). He co-teaches Approaches to Design History, Part II with Alicia Ajayi in the Fall Semester.
@jonkey13
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Writer, documentary filmmaker and producer
Adam Harrison Levy is a writer and freelance documentary film producer and director. He specializes in the art of the interview. For the BBC he has conducted interviews with a wide range of actors, writers, musicians and film-makers including Meryl Streep, Philip Glass, and Paul Auster. He was the U.S. producer for Selling the Sixties, a cultural history of advertising in New York in the early 1960s and Close Up, about the artist Chuck Close. His directing credits for the BBC include Step Right Up and War Machine. He has produced and directed interviews for films such as Lou Reed Remembered, The Kennedys, and D-Day to Berlin. He is a contributing writer for The Design Observer and wrote the catalog essay for Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945, an exhibition at the International Center for Photography and Saul Leiter: Retrospective at the Deichtohallen, Hamburg. His journalism has appeared in The Huffington Post and The Guardian Weekend Magazine. In 2012 and 2013 he curated the BBC/SVA documentary film festival and in 2012 he was a Poynter Fellow at Yale University. In 2013 and 2104 he is a visiting assistant professor in the Film Studies Department at Wesleyan University.
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Arts writer, architect, and media consultant
Pierre Alexandre de Looz is a New York-based arts writer, architect, and media consultant. He has reported on art, design and fashion for The New York Times Style Magazine T, Fantastic Man, V magazine, Art in America, Surface, and Tokion, among others. He is New York contributing editor for award winning 032c magazine, for which he has profiled leading fashion industry figures like photographer Steven Meisel, designer Nicolas Ghesquière, and most recently designer Raf Simons. In 2006 he co-founded design and culture semiannual PIN-UP magazine, and serves as the magazine’s editor-at-large. He is a graduate of Yale University with a B.A. in Comparative Literature and earned a Master’s in Architecture from Columbia University in 2004. Following apprenticeships with Robert AM Stern and Zaha Hadid, his design work currently focuses on residential and exhibition design.
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SVP of Content Development at Pushkin Industries
Leital Molad is the head of content development at Pushkin Industries, the audio company that's home to Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History, Broken Record with Rick Rubin, The Happiness Lab, Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, and many more chart-topping podcasts and audiobooks. Previously, she was the executive producer of podcasts at First Look Media (Topic Studios & The Intercept). Before that, Molad spent more than a decade producing radio and podcasts at WNYC, including the Peabody Award-winning arts and culture show Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen. She has an MA in journalism from NYU.
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Cultural critic and author
Anne Elizabeth Moore is a cultural critic and the author of Gentrifier: A Memoir (2021), an NPR best book, Unmarketable (2007), the Eisner Award-winning Sweet Little Cunt (2018), and other titles. She was the founding editor of the Best American Comics, and is the former editor of the Chicago Reader and Punk Planet. She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Yaddo Corporation and the Fulbright Commission. She previously taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was the Mackey Chair of Creative Writing at Beloit College. She lives in New York with her cat, Captain America. The Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2017 Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes is being expanded for the pandemic and will be out from Feminist Press in 2023.
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Director of Programming, MA Design Research, Writing and Criticism
Eric is a comedian and columnist. He currently pens the Catty Corner column in New York Review of Architecture. He is the co-founder of Talk Hole, a comedy and media brand.
At D-Crit, Eric fulfills numerous roles in the department as Graduate Advisor, Applied Media Workshop and Thesis Development Workshop instructor, and Program Director of the Design Writing & Research Summer Intensive.
He is a former editor at Taschen, where he worked on art & photography titles as well as series with The New York Times and National Geographic. He holds a B.A. in Urban Studies with Honors from Vassar College.
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Technology and culture columnist, Yahoo News
Rob Walker is a technology and culture columnist for Yahoo News and a blogger at Design Observer, and until 2013 wrote The New York Times Magazine’s Consumed column. He is the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are (Random House, 2008), Letters From New Orleans (Garrett County Press, 2005) and the co-editor with Joshua Glenn of Significant Objects: 100 Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things (Fantagraphics, 2012). Walker is the co-founder, with Ellen Susan and G.K. Darby, of The Hypothetical Development Organization, and founding collaborator of the Unconsumption project, and is often called on as an expert commentator on the subject of material culture and branding, notably in the documentary Objectified.
Guest Faculty & Critics

Writer and critic
Fall 2022 Critic-in-residence Vanessa Rosales is a Colombian-based writer and critic. Her second book Uncomfortable Woman was published in 2021 by Penguin Random House. She has a podcast that combines cultural criticism, the history and theory of style, women's history and literature as well as the multiplicity of the feminist perspective. As an essayist and public intellectual she has specialized in understanding everything that is uncomfortable about the ways in which the feminine has been constructed in historical, social and cultural terms.
She writes a weekly column for one of the major local newspapers El Espectador. She created and led the first Diploma in Critical Studies of Fashion for the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in the country.
She teaches critical fashion studies, women's literature and feminist theory in hybrid, independent, formats. Rosales has an MFA in Fashion Studies from Parsons The New School for Design, studied a masters in journalism and majored in history. Her work has been featured in Vestoj, The Business of Fashion, CNN Style, Vogue Latin America, BBC Mundo, and several Latin and Colombian publications. She is now working on her third book.

Author and editor
Craig Taylor is the author of New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time and Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now—As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It. His two previous books, Return to Akenfield and One Million Tiny Plays About Britain, were adapted for the stage. He is the editor of the literary magazine Five Dials.

Critic, editor, and curator
Mimi Zeiger is a Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator.
She was co-curator of the U.S. Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, curator of Soft Schindler at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, and co-curator of the 2020-2021 Exhibit Columbus entitled New Middles: From Main Street to Megalopolis, What is the Future of the Middle City?
She has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Review, Metropolis, and Architect. She is an opinion columnist for Dezeen and former West Coast Editor of The Architects Newspaper. Zeiger is the 2015 recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal for excellence in writing about landscape architecture.
Zeiger is author of New Museums, Tiny Houses, Micro Green: Tiny Houses in Nature, and Tiny Houses in the City. In 1997, Zeiger founded loud paper, an influential zine and digital publication dedicated to increasing the volume of architectural discourse.
She has curated, contributed to, and collaborated on projects that have been shown at the Art Institute Chicago, 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, the New Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, pinkcomma gallery, and the AA School. She co-curated Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, which received the Bronze Dragon award at the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen.
She is visiting faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and teaches in the Media Design Practices MFA program at Art Center College of Design. She was co-president of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design and taught at the School of Visual Art, Art Center, Parsons New School of Design, and the California College of the Arts (CCA).
She holds a Master of Architecture degree from SCI-Arc and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University.
- Glenn Adamson, director of the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), “Making it in NYC”
- Vince Aletti, photography critic, The New Yorker, “Face of Fashion: Fashion Photography, Art Direction, and Magazine Design“
- Donald Albrecht, curator, Museum of the City of New York, “The Power of Display”
- Steve Almond, author, “How to Make the Reader See It: The Book as a Visual Artifact“
- Marianela D'Aprile, deputy editor New York Review of Architecture
- Allison Arieff, The New York Times columnist and author, “From Derrida to Dwell to DIY Urbanism”
- Nicholson Baker, novelist, critic, “Wrapping Sentences Around Things“
- Emilie Baltz, founder, creative director, Baltzworks; brand director Museum of Sex, “Why Foreplay Makes the Food (AKA: There’s More to a Steak Than Beef)“
- David Barringer, author, graphic designer, photographer, artist, “Design As Literature: The Changing Shape of the Novel”
- Michael Barson, ephemera collector, publicist, Penguin Books
- Jake Barton, founder, Local Projects, “Collaborative Storytelling and the Dissolution of Technology“
- Martin Beck, artist, “Selected for Their Implications”
- Eugenia Bell, design editor, Frieze, “Design, Observed: Writing Design and Architecture“
- Roger Bennett, sports and culture writer, “On Objects“
- Aaron Betsky, critic, curator, director, Cincinnati Art Museum, “Architecture Beyond Building“
- Peter Biľak, founder and editor, Works that Work, “Works That Work: Making Magazines Today”
- Ayse Birsel, co-founder, Birsel + Sec, “Design the Life You Love”
- Andrew Blauvelt, curator of Architecture and Design and chief of communications and audience engagement, Walker Art Center, “Graphic Design: Discipline, Medium, Practice, Tool, or Other?”
- David Blum, writer, editor, Amazon.com’s Kindle Singles
- Alan Brake, architecture critic, executive editor The Architect’s Newspaper
- Luke Bulman and Jessica Young, partners, graphic design office Thumb, “Some Loose Connections”
- Chandler Burr, author and perfume critic, The New York Times, “Invisible Design: The Structure of Scents”
- Stephen Cassell, principal, Architecture Research Office
- Vishan Chakrabarti, director of the Center for Urban Real Estate at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation and partner at SHoP Architects, “A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for Urban America”
- Aric Chen, curator of Design and Architecture at M+, Hong Kong, “Building a Visual Culture Museum from Zero, or The World, from Another Point of View”
- Irwin Chusid, archivist, radio host
- Jeff Chu, articles editor, Fast Company
- Brian Collins and John Fulbrook, Collins, “Defining the Story“
- Lucy Collins, fashion critic, “From the Ivory Tower to the Tents: Thinking Critically about Fashion”
- Zoe Coombes, designer, founder, Cmmnwlth, “Dirt from Glass Cages”
- Glen Cummings, MTWTF, “Negotiating Urban Nature“
- Elizabeth Demaray, conceptual artist, “The Hand-Up Project”
- Mark Dery, cultural critic, “The Politics of Style”
- Elyssa Dimant, fashion critic, “‘In Rogue’: Crafting Fashion Criticism”
- Joanne Dolan Ingersoll, curator, department head of Costumes and Textiles, RISD Museum of Art, “Mannequins in the Museum: Perspectives on Curating Fashion”
- Greg D’Onofrio and Patricia Belen, partners, Kind Co.
- Susannah Drake, principal, dlandstudio
- William Drenttel, designer, author, social entrepreneur, publisher, editorial director of Design Observer
- Stuart Ewen, design historian, “Calculated Nostalgia”
- Peter Feld, web editor, blogger
- Louise Fili, author, graphic designer, Louise Fili Ltd.
- Russell Flinchum, design historian, “The Other Half of Henry Dreyfuss“
- Rob Forbes, founder, Design Within Reach
- Mark Foster Gage, architect and principal, Gage / Clemenceau Architects, “Architecture After Concepts”
- Sasha Frere-Jones, music critic, The New Yorker
- Eva Franch, executive director, Storefront for Art and Architecture, “Corporate Avant Garde and the Return of Disruption“
- Jason Fulford, photographer, co-founder, J&L Books, “Land“
- Pedro Gadanho, author, architect, curator, MoMA Department of Architecture and Design, “Is Curating the New Criticism?”
- Beatrice Galilee, associate curator of Architecture and Design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Activating Architecture”
- Paul Galloway, archivist, MoMA
- Dwight Garner, book critic, The New York Times
- Milton Glaser, graphic designer, “D-Crit Open House, 2012“
- Vicki Gold Levi, photo researcher
- Jamie Gray, founder, Matter
- Toni Griffin, director, J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City, “Design for the Just City“
- Alisa Grifo and Marco ter Haar Romeny, proprietors of New York City retail store KIOSK, “The Things We Never Stop Thinking About”
- Jocelyn Groom, head of exhibitions, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
- Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic, Los Angeles Times, “The Plume: Architecture Under a Cloud”
- Virginia Heffernan, columnist, television critic, The New York Times, “The Pleasures of the Internet”
- Sharon Helgason Gallagher, president, ART BOOK/DAP, “The Book and the Bicycle“
- Scott Henderson, designer, founder, Scott Henderson, Inc.
- Eric Himmel, editor-in-chief, Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
- Glenn Horowitz, antiquarian book dealer
- Jamer Hunt, associate professor of Transcdisplinary Design, Parsons, “Becoming Transdisciplinary: Critical Unbecoming“
- Julie V. Iovine, executive editor, Architect’s Newspaper, “The Difference between Newsworthy and New: Reporting and Criticism in the Architectural Press”
- Bjarke Ingels, founder, Bjarke Ingels Group, “Speculatively Speaking: The Future of Design Criticism“
- Interboro Partners, urban designers, “Advocacy and Pluralism in Architecture“
- Alexandra Jacobs, fashion critic and fashion features writer at The New York Times, “Trending: How Fashion Has Gone From Class to Mass (and Maybe Mess)”
- Anab Jain, designer, filmmaker, and founder of design studio Superflux, “Design for Anxious Times”
- Natalie Jeremijenko, artist, engineer, associate professor, NYU Visual Art Department, “Critical Engagment: Re-Imagining our Relationship to Natural Systems and Material Culture”
- Casey Jones, director of design excellence and the arts, U.S. General Services Administration, “E Pluribus Unum: Creating Design Policy in the U.S.A.”
- Eve Kahn, writer, editor, antiques columnist, The New York Times
- Ben Katchor, cartoonist
- Markus Kayser, inventor, product designer, “Can There Be Union between Nature and Technology in Fabrication?”
- Olympia Kazi, writer, curator, former executive director, Van Alen institute, “Speculatively Speaking: The Future of Design Criticism“
- Kevin Kearney, founder Hard Candy Shell
- Nicolas Kemper, publisher New York Review of Architecture
- Stuart Kestenbaum, director, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts
- Michael Kimmelman, chief architecture critic, The New York Times, “The Role of an Architecture Critic and Possibilities for the Future of Criticism“
- Juliet Kinchin, curator, Department of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art
- Emily King, author, curator, design historian
- Linda King, lecturer, Design History, Theory and Visual Communication, Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dublin, “Fly Irish: US and Dutch Influences on Aer Lingus Advertising”
- Pat Kirkham, design historian, “Writing Critical Monographs: Case Studies of Ray and Charles Eames & Elaine and Saul Bass”
- David Krasnow, senior editor, PRI’s “Studio 360”
- Prem Krishnamurthy, cofounder, Project Projects, “As of 10.15.12“
- Robert Krulwich, NPR science correspondent and co-host, “Radiolab,” “Hard Stories Told Easily”
- Laura Kurgan, architect, designer, teacher, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, “Mapping Justice”
- Melissa Lafsky, author Opinionistas blog
- Jimenez Lai, architect, “Cartoonish Architecture“
- Mark Lamster, author, critic, “How to Write a Book”
- Cathy Lang Ho, founder, The Architect’s Newspaper; commissioner, curator, U.S. Pavillion at the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale
- Lewis Lapham, writer, former editor of Harper’s, “Eye to Eye with Lewis Lapham“
- Kerry Lauerman, editor, Salon.com
- Sarah Lawrence, director, MA History of Decorative Arts & Design program, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
- Saul Leiter, artist, photographer
- Greg Lindsay, author, writer, Fast Company
- Andrea Lipps, curatorial assistant, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
- Tod Lippy, editor-in-chief, Espous, “More than Words“
- George Lois, art director, designer, author
- Kati London, game designer, Zynga, “New Forms of Engagement and Play in a Sensor- and Real-Time-Data-Dominated World“
- Peter Lunenfeld, professor, UCLA, “Your Client is the Future“
- Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, “Design Fictions: How the Art of Narrative Can Dominate the Understanding of Design Practice”
- Elaine Lustig Cohen, designer, book dealer, artist
- Geoff Manaugh, author, BLDGBLOG
- Roman Mars, creator of “99% Invisible” and host and program director of “Public Radio Remix” from PRX, “Now You See It: Telling Stories about the Built World”
- Deborah Marton, executive director, Design Trust for Public Spaces, “Design Trust: Building Partnerships to Improve Public Space“
- Cathleen McGuigan, arts editor, Newsweek, “The Role of Design Criticism in the National Press”
- Samuel Medina, Editor-in-chief New York Review of Architecture
- Michael Meredith, founder MOS Architects, faculty at Princeton School of Architecture, “Playful Experimentation and Criticism“
- Adam Michaels, co-founder, Project Projects, “As of 10.15.12“
- Abbott Miller, writer, curator, partner, Pentagram, “The In-Between of Form and Content”
- Debbie Millman, chair, SVA MPS Branding
- Victoria Milne, director of creative services, NYC’s Department of Design and Construction, “We Built This City: How Art, Graphics, and Design Policy Take Shape for New Yorkers“
- Bill Moggridge, director, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, “The Role of Collecting, Curating and Education in the Context of a National Design Museum”
- Nicholas de Monchaux, author, architect, and theorist, “Fashioning Appollo: The Story of the Twenty-One-Layer Spacesuit“
- Lars Müller, publisher, Lars Muller Publishers
- Regina Myer, president, Brooklyn Bridge Park
- Dan Nadel, author, curator, director, PictureBox Inc.
- Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the One Laptop per Child Foundation and co-founder of the MIT Media Laboratory, “Reflecting on the One Laptop Per Child Project”
- Jane Nisselson, founder, Virtual Beauty, “Cinematics of Systems, Processes, and Beautiful Things“
- Philip Nobel, architecture critic
- Bruce Nussbaum, contributing editor, Business Week, “Breaking the Frames“
- Amy Ogata, design historian, “Design, Creativity, and Postwar American Childhood”
- Kevin O’Callaghan, 3D designer, collector
- Jonathan Olivares, industrial designer, researcher, “Working with Jonathan Olivares“
- Spyros Papapetros, assistant professor, Princeton University School of Architecture, “Figure and Frame in German Architecture and Film: From Mies to Murnau”
- Gregg Pasquarelli, founding partner, SHoP Architects
- Chee Pearlman, design consultant, conference program director, “Designing the Live Content Experience”
- Martin Pedersen, executive editor, Metropolis
- Maria Popova, founder, editor-in-chief, Brain Pickings
- Virginia Postrel, author, columnist, “Meaning and Value in Commercial Culture”
- Alissa Quart, journalist and author
- Fiona Raby, designer and partner Dunne & Raby, “United micro-Kingdoms (UmK): A Design Fiction”
- David Reinfurt, graphic designer, writer, critic, “The First Rule is Always Production, Never Documentation. The Second Rule is There Are No Rules“
- Roger Remington, printmaker, graphic designer, Vignelli Distinguished Professor of Design, RIT
- Sarah Rich, writer, editorial consultant, digital strategist, “Tracing Footprints: Exploring the Intersection of Design, Technology, Cities, and Food“
- Damon Rich, urban designer for the City of Newark, founder, Center for Urban Pedagogy, “Working the System: Recent Attempts to Bring Design and Politics to Productive Crisis“
- Fred Ritchin, professor of Photography and Imaging, NYU Tisch School of the Arts
- Michael Rock, 2 x 4 founding partner, “Speaking Surfaces,” “Superficiality, Dematerialization, and Branded Surfaces”
- Noah Rosenberg, editor-in-chief, Narratively, “Slow Down“
- Constance Rosenblum, editor and reporter, The New York Times, “Private Lives in the Big City: Writing About New Yorkers and Their Distinctive Habitats“
- Jeff Roth, researcher, The New York Times
- Tina Roth Eisenberg, founder, Swiss Miss
- Elizabeth Royte, journalist
- Andrew Rumbach, PhD candidate, City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, “Only by the Grace of God: The Political Ecology of Urban Disasters“
- Zoe Ryan, Neville Bryan Curator of Design, The Art Institute of Chicago, “Contemporary Constructions: Design at the Art Institute of Chicago“
- Witold Rybczynski, author, critic, “The Biography of a Building“
- Danielle Sacks, senior writer, Fast Company
- Katie Salen, writer, educator, Parsons Design and Technology Program, “Everyone Knows Something: Design of Participation“
- James Sanders, architect, author, and documentary filmmaker, “Begin with the Screen: Using Film to Explore Issues of Architecture and Design“
- Mark Schapiro, editorial director, Center for Investigative Reporting
- Jeffrey Schnapp, cultural historian, “Man, Machine, Morality“
- Jason Schupbach, director of Design Programs for the National Endowment for the Arts, “Design Federal”
- Felicity Scott, assistant professor, Columbia University Graduate School or Architecture, Planning and Preservation, “Non-Communication: Bernard Rudofsky and the Empire of Signs”
- John Seabrook, author, staff writer, The New Yorker
- Neil Selkirk, photographer
- Adrian Shaughnessy, graphic designer, writer, publisher
- Paul Shaw, type archeologist, design historian
- Cynthia Smith, curator of socially responsible design, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
- Gabriel Snyder, editor-in-chief, Gawker
- Deborah Solomon, art critic, The New York Times journalist, biographer
- Jenni Sorkin, craft historian, “The Pottery Seminar at Black Mountain College“
- Michael Sorkin, architect and urbanist, “New York City (Steady) State: An Outgoing Research Project Investigating the Limits of Local Autonomy“
- Sandy Speicher, education director at IDEO, “Design for Learning“
- Naomi Stead, architecture, art, design writer
- Lockhart Steele, blog publisher, president, Curbed
- Valerie Steele, founder, editor-in-chief, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, “Fashion Theory”
- Emily Stokes-Rees, material anthropologist, “Museumizing the National Imagination: Reflections on Citizenship and Time Traveling“
- Jon Sueda, graphic designer and director of Design at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, “Wide Open Spaces”
- Maki Suzuki, graphic designer, åbäke, “Seriously Forks XI”
- Susan Szenasy, editor-in-chief, Metropolis
- Gay Talese, author journalist, “Eye to Eye with Gay Talese“
- Lettie Teague, wine columnist, staff writer, The Wall Street Journal, “The Language of Wine Labels“
- Edward Tenner, author, historian of technology and culture
- John Thackara, founder, director of The Doors of Perception, “The Revelation“
- Jane Thompson, editor, designer, urban planner, “Rediscovering Design Research: Concept, Atmosphere, Impact on Modern Living”
- Philip Tiongson, principal, Potion, “Invention and Intention: Building Experiential Stories“
- Linda Tischler, senior editor, Fast Company, “Speculatively Speaking: The Future of Design Criticism“
- Catarina Tsang and Patrick Seymour, principals, Tsang Seymour Design Inc.
- George Trakas, sculptor
- Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger, partners, Antenna Design, “Design for Activation”
- Valerie Vago Laurer, editor, Phaidon Books
- David van der Leer, executive director, Van Alen Institute, “Into the Streets: Engaging Urban Citizens into More Consistent Thinking and Speaking Up on Cities”
- Daniel van der Velden, founding partner, Metahaven
- Kazys Varnelis, director, Network Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, “Network Culture: A Changing Context for Design“
- Pilar Viladas, design editor, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, “Words and Pictures“
- Khoi Vinh, graphic designer, blogger
- Alissa Walker, blogger and author
- John Warner, editor, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, “It’s Funny Because its True. It’s True Because it’s Funny“
- Lawrence Weschler, author and director, NYU Institute for the Humanities, “Towards a Typology of Convergences“
- Kerry William Purcell, writer, design critic, historian
- Cintra Wilson, fashion critic, “Fear and Clothing“
- David Womack, executive creative director, R/GA
Current Students
Class of 2024
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Creator and researcher
Elmaz Abdurashytova (or Elly as friends and family call her) is a native Crimean-Tatar who moved to Beijing after the Crimean peninsula was occupied. She possesses a unique background that encouraged her continuous growth as a creator and researcher. Crimea’s rich history has shaped her worldview and found expression in her writing and art.
She aspires to channel her creative efforts into telling stories that illuminate entrenched issues in overlooked communities. She hopes to offer support to those struggling for a better future and to those whose tragedies have put them into positions of social and mental vulnerability. She is determined to help those with a similar background in confronting and processing their experiences within a broader political, social, and economic context. D-Crit is a place where she can join a generation of thinkers that drive positive change.
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Writer, researcher, and spatial designer
AJ Kushner is a writer, researcher, and spatial designer in Brooklyn with a particular fondness for historic interiors, architecture, and decorative arts. He has a BA in Art History with a minor in English Literature from Skidmore College and an MFA in Interior Design from Parsons School of Design. At Parsons, he developed a research and writing practice centered on queer history, material culture, and how natural and constructed environments are experienced and designed by LGBTQ+ individuals and collectives.
AJ is interested in queer interiority as a theoretical condition, with queerness itself as the root condition from which queer activation of space and time erupts. By experimenting with written, visual, and other forms of media, he hopes to create new forms of storytelling queer spatial and object narratives, and illuminate the work of the designers, users, participants, structures, and philosophies of our time, and the activations that result.
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Designer
Maxwell Lent is a designer who loves to think about architecture. He graduated with a degree in Art History from Harvard College, where he wrote a thesis on the architectural replication found in a New York-based Hasidic group.
He has interned at world-renowned architecture firms Pei Cobb Freed, Woods Bagot, and, most recently, Rockwell Group. Following college, he worked for a Philadelphia-based developer specializing in adaptive reuse.
Most recently, he pursued a Masters of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania but left in pursuit of a better work-life balance. At D-Crit, he hopes to continue exploring how design influences his Jewish background and the community from which he hails. He also plans to embrace America’s rail infrastructure by spending many hours commuting on Amtrak trains to and from Philadelphia.
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Art historian, researcher, and curator
Lindsay Ning is an art historian and researcher, digital communications strategist, and curator based in New York City. With a multifaceted background in Visual Studies, Religious Studies, Art & Design History, and Hispanic Studies through her B.A. from The New School, she is committed to bridging the gap between traditional art forms and contemporary issues, themes, and technology through her practice. Growing up in multiple cultures— China (Cantonese & Northeastern), Singapore, and the United States— has further influenced her research in cross-cultural design that aims to engage audiences in a dialogue that transcends borders, languages, and cultures.
Lindsay previously worked as digital communications manager at Ippodo Gallery—the only Japanese-owned contemporary Japanese art gallery in New York—with her work revolving around the promotion and exploration of traditional East Asian arts and crafts merged with contemporary design.
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Designer, researcher, and comedian
Saprila Putri is a designer, researcher, and standup comedian. She got her bachelor degree in Visual Communication Design at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Surakarta. Previously, she worked for a movie production company called Visinema Pictures, working as graphic designer for movie promotional content such as, Stealing Raden Saleh, Too Handsome to Handle, and The Wedding Shaman. She actively participates in a standup comedy community in Surakarta, where she learned to write and perform jokes. Her comedy background has come in handy in her graphic design work.
She also enjoys solo traveling and observing visuals around her when visiting new places. She is obsessed with Indonesian visual culture, especially anything related to vernacular design and hopes to expand her writing and research at D-Crit.
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Grantmaker and strategist
Olivia Trabysh mobilizes philanthropic dollars to fund social justice movements. Over the last decade, she has been a grantmaker and program and communications strategist for activist funds, community foundations, and most recently, the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation based in New York City. She researches public memorials across the United States and designs commemorative processes and monuments to bring justice to survivors of sexual violence.
Her grantmaking practices advance abolition and community-based approaches to safety through interconnected frames focused on race, class, gender, and climate. Her field leadership has interrupted the flow of resources to carceral systems and the growing power of fascist political associations undermining the right to protest in Southern and rural spaces. Olivia is a named contributor to #metoo. International’s Political & Social Framework and a Funders for Justice Fellow. She holds a BA in English from West Texas A&M University, with concentrations in art history and political science.
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Art critic
Allison Hewitt Ward is an art critic based in New York City. Grounded in history and dialectical in method, her articles, reviews and essays engage the incomplete project of modernity in an uncertain century. Hewitt Ward draws heavily from the Frankfurt School in her critiques of diverse cultural objects spanning museums, public art, architecture and mass media. Publications include The Brooklyn Rail, Spike Art Magazine, Even Magazine, Caesura, New York Review of Architecture and her somewhat sporadic Substack Wrong Life Review. Her work is included in the anthology Out of Practice: Ten Issues of Even. She teaches critical theory in the School of Visual Art’s MFA Art Practice and Continuing Education departments
Alumni

Polly Adams

Nawar N. Al-Kazemi

Lucas Albrecht
Class of 2023

Mariam Aldhahi

Lila Allen

Esty Bagos

Derek Bangle
Class of 2017
New York City

Ida C. Benedetto

Alper Besen
Class of 2015
Istanbul, Turkey

Alexander Bevier

Kimberlie Birks
Class of 2011

Amelia Black
Class of 2010

Brigette Brown

Molly Butcher

Lorena Canales

John Cantwell

Aaron Chu

Olivia Coetzee

Sarah Cox

Tara Gupta Dabir

Jared Dalcourt
Class of 2022

Deena Denaro

Brittany Dickinson

Pune Dracker

Anne Drape

Frederico Duarte

Michelle Duncan

Barbara Eldredge

Cecilia Fagel
Class of 2013

Meg Farmer

Auston Gonzalez

Kathryn Henderson

Chetan Kaashyap

Anna Kealey

Komal Kehar

Soyoun Kim

Alex Klimoski

Emily Kwok

Aileen Kwun

Amélie Lamont

Emily Leibin

Heba Malaeb
Class of 2018

Saundra Marcel
Class of 2011

Andrew McQuiston
Class of 2022

Olivia Mercado
Class of 2019

Susan Merritt

Evelyn Meynard

Christina Milan
Class of 2015

William Myers

Joseph F. Nally
Class of 2020

Mike Neal
Class of 2010

Monica Nelson

Emma Ng

Paul Olmer
Class of 2017
Brooklyn, New York

Anwulika Oputa
Class of 2021

Lisa O’Neil
Class of 2018

Lauren Palmer
Class of 2015

Hortense Proust
Class of 2016
Follow Hortense Proust on Twitter: @hortense_proust / Thesis

Anne Quito

Avinash Rajagopal

Joseph Ramsawak

Shravani Rao
Class of 2016
Bangalore, India

Alan Rapp
Class of 2010

Ian Beckman Reagan

Ajay Revels
Class of 2018

Angela Riechers
Class of 2010
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Follow Angela Riechers on Instagram: @designspeakeasy / Thesis

Shani Rodan

Casey Romaine

Erin Routson

Trilby Schreiber
Class of 2015
New York City

Ridhima Sharma

Amna Siddiqui

Lisa Silbermayr

Anna Marie Smith

Bryn Smith
Class of 2013

Cornelia Smith
Class of 2022

Jessie Sun

Roshita Thomas
Class of 2022

Amanda Vallance
Class of 2014

Brooke Viegut
Class of 2022

Michele Washington
Class of 2011

Ann Weiser

Jiwon Woo
Class of 2017
New York City

Molly Woodward
Class of 2016
Brooklyn, New York

Cheryl Yau
Class of 2012

Galina Yordanov

Jenni Young

Aneta Zeleznikova

Youyou Zhou
Class of 2021

Justin Zhuang

Amelie Znidaric
Class of 2011