People

Irene Cheng, Associate Professor, Co-Director of History Theory Experiments and MAAD HTX

Irene is an architectural historian, critic, and educator. Her research explores the entanglements of architecture, culture, politics, and the environment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her current book project, entitled The Shape of Utopia: The Architecture of Radical Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press) explores the geometry of architectural projects affiliated with anarchist, socialist, abolitionist, free love, spiritualist, and other radical antebellum movements. She is also a co-director of the  Race + Modern Architecture Project (R+MAP), an interdisciplinary research group that is exploring the influence of racial discourses on architecture from the Enlightenment to the recent past, and a co-editor of Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).

James Graham, Assistant Professor, Co-Director of History Theory Experiments and MAAD HTX

James is a historian, architect, and assistant professor at the California College of the Arts. He is currently working on a book titled Psychotechnical Modernism: Architecture, Design, and Occupational Therapy, 1914–1945, which looks at the relationship of modernist design pedagogy to emerging ideas about vocation, ability, embodiment, and the organization of labor. James’s research and teaching interests also include the intersections of architecture with climatic imaginaries and environmental thought as well as the dynamics of extractive global modernity. He is a founding editor of the Avery Review, a digital journal of critical essays on architecture, and he both practices and writes about architecture’s discursive forms, whether as editorial platforms or experiments in digital and print publication.

Affiliated Faculty

Satellite Advisors

  • Mario Ballesteros, Director and Chief Curator, Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura, Mexico City
  • Joseph Becker, Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, SFMOMA
  • Giovanna Borasi, Chief Curator, The Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal
  • Nerea Calvillo, Architect and Researcher, UK
  • Brendan Cormier, Lead Curator of Design for the Shekou Partnership, The Victoria and Albert Museum
  • Fabrizio Gallanti, Director, FIG Projects, Montreal
  • Maria Garcia Holley, Director, Creative City Strategy, Laboratorio para la Ciudad, Mexico City
  • Joseph Grima, Director, Space Caviar, and Creative Director, Design Academy Eindhoven
  • Adam Lowe, Director Factum Arte and the Factum Arte Foundation, Madrid
  • Geoff Manaugh, Author, BldgBlog.com, A Burglar’s Guide to the City
  • Nicola Twilley, Author, The New Yorker and Gastropod.com

MAAD HTX Students and Alumni

  • Leandra Burnett, 2020
  • Kurt Pelzer, 2019 (University of California, Los Angeles)
  • Shubalakshmi Shekar, 2018
  • Meghana Prabhune, 2017
  • Fangying Zhu, 2017
  • Sitou Akolly, 2016 (Architect and researcher, UN Studio, Amsterdam)
  • Kelsang Chandra, 2015 (University of California, Berkeley)
  • Joseph Becker, 2013 (Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, SFMOMA)
  • Yves Ghai Chamlou, 2010 (Director, Yves Ghai Chamlou Architects)

Interns

  • Lucie Waschke, 2016

Visitors (Guest lecturers and Critics)

  • Lucia Allais
  • Brendan Cormier
  • Brinker Ferguson
  • Zephyr Frank
  • Nicholas de Monchaux
  • Keller Easterling
  • Joseph Grima
  • Andrew Herscher
  • Pamela Karimi
  • Mari Lending
  • Marlin Lum
  • Albert Narath
  • Michael Osman
  • Jorge Otero-Pailos
  • Carla Schroer
  • Jeffrey Schnapp
  • Lisa Uddin
  • Mark Wasiuta
  • Mabel Wilson
  • Winnie Wong