D-Crit People

Faculty

• Alicia Ajayi

  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.

  

• Margaret Arbanas

  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.

  

• Brian Droitcour

  Critic, editor, and curator

  Brian Droitcour is a critic, editor, and curator. He has contributed to publications including 4columns and Rhizome, and catalogues for exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, the New Museum, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, among others. From 2014 to 2021 he worked at Art in America magazine, where he organized special issues on topics including the digitized museum, generative art, and immersive art. Since 2021 he has been editor-in-chief at Outland, an online publication exploring artists’ use of blockchains, AI, gaming systems, and other emerging technologies and genres. He has taught in MFA programs at Pratt Institute, Maine College of Art, the George Washington University, and City College of New York.

  

• Molly Heintz

  MA Design Research Program Chair

  Molly Fulghum Heintz is the Program Chair of the SVA MA Design Research program and the editor at large at Architectural Record, 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.

  She co-edited The Education of a Design Writer (Allworth 2025) with Steven Heller, an anthology of outstanding new design writing. Her recent research has focused on design and disinformation, and she presented a related paper, “The Role of Design in the Creation of Fake News,” at the College Art Association Conference.

  

• Steven Heller

  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.”

  @thedailyheller

  

• Karrie Jacobs

  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).

  

• Jennifer Kabat

  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.

  

• Nicolas Kemper

  Publisher, New York Review of Architecture
  

• Jon Key

  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

  

• Jennifer Krasinski

  Writer and cultural critic

  Jennifer Krasinski is a writer and cultural critic who contributes to 4Columns, Bookforum, the New York Review of Books, and other publications. Her essays have been published in numerous books and catalogs including Reza Abdoh, Jill Johnston: The Disintegration of a Critic, and Hilton Als's Andy Warhol: The Series. She was an art columnist for the Village Voice from 2014 to 2018, and served as both senior editor at Artforum and later as the magazine’s digital editorial director. She taught at Art Center College of Design, New York University, Yale University, and is currently teaching in the MFA Art program at Lesley University. She is the recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2012), a Rauschenberg residency, and is a 2023–24 MacDowell fellow.

  

• Adam Harrison Levy

  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.

  

• Pierre Alexandre de Looz

  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.

  

• Leital Molad

  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.

  

• Anne Elizabeth Moore

  Cultural critic and author

  Anne Elizabeth Moore is the Eisner-winning author of a critical overview of the work of cartoonist Julie Doucet, as well as a long-standing comics, book, film, and culture critic. Gentrifier: A Memoir is an NPR Best Book and Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes was nominated for a Chicago Review of Books Award and a Lambda Award, was a Chicago Public Library Best Book, and was released in a second edition by Feminist Press. Her award-nominated podcast, My Inevitable Murder, is a true-crime comedy investigation of her own impending demise, and is supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the New York State Council on the Arts.

  

• Eric Schwartau

  Writer and Editor

  Eric Schwartau is a writer, editor, and comedian. He pens the Catty Corner column for New York Review of Architecture, where he is a Contributing Editor, and co-founded Talk Hole, a comedy and culture project that began as a live show before evolving into a column for Interview and Gawker. He previously worked as an editor at Taschen and recently directed Steven Phillips-Horst in The Last Mad Man, a one-man show that premiered at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe.

  As the former Director of Programming & Publications at D-Crit, he taught the Applied Media Workshop, Thesis Development Workshop, and Design Writing and Research Summer Intensive, and edited 2NDFL, the department’s biannual publication. His teaching centers on experimental writing forms, voice and creative development, and the relationship between design and contemporary culture. He currently teaches Contemporary Issues in Design: New York City as Case Study.

  A 2025 Google Artists + Machine Intelligence awardee, Eric is developing new frameworks for teaching and writing about AI in design in collaboration with Outland Editor, Brian Droitcour.

  

• Craig Taylor

  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.

  

• Courtney Treglia

  Director of Operations, D-Crit; Artist and Writer

  Courtney Treglia is an artist and writer born and raised in New York. Spending half of her life in Rochester deepened her love of nature, and the other half living on Long Island opened her eyes to the cultural disparity and elitism of suburban living. Courtney uses visual imagery and color to process emotions that dwell within the metaphysical labyrinths that rupture in the face of life’s unexpected challenges. Her desire to capture the neurodiversity and empowerment of the human experience through art and writing is born from her childhood love of music, science fiction, and animation. Courtney looks forward to spending her fifth year at SVA supporting her students in both the MA/MAT Art Education and MA Design Research, Writing, and Criticism departments.

  

• Rob Walker

  Author and Fast Company columnist

  Rob Walker is a journalist and columnist covering technology, design, business, and other subjects. A longtime contributor to The New York Times, he writes a column on branding for Fast Company, and has contributed to for Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, Fortune, Marketplace, and many other outlets. He is the coeditor of Lost Objects: 50 Stories about the Things We Miss and Why They Matter, and the author of The Art of Noticing. He is often called on as an expert commentator on the subject of material culture and branding, notably in the documentary Objectified. His newsletter is at robwalker.substack.com.