What courses do you teach?

I teach ARCH 2000, ARCH 2500, & summerFAB (current); ARCH 3500 (2020); I also teach FutureLab, but that is an alternative co-op and not a class. 

Briefly share what led you to the work you do now.

Currently, the bulk of my work is teaching, but I also do a fair amount of public art and landscape design on the side with my business, make/do studio. The through line with all of these, for me, is the focus on working closely with people and building community. How I got here a combination of three things: First, my parents are artists, so making art and analytical discussion around design has always been a part of my life. Second, I finished my bachelor's degree at the Rural Studio in west Alabama where I designed and built affordable housing for real people with very real needs. This was hugely formative in shifting my focus to more socially responsible design. And finally, I believe that growing up as part of the LGBTQIA+ community has shaped me into a more actively empathetic person —as a teacher, as an artist, and as a designer.

Describe one thing that you are working on or is happening in your area that you are excited about.

I am really excited to be working directly with real people in real communities through the FutureLab this summer. I owe a great deal of the empathy that I have as an architect and designer to my own experience as member of the queer community. I always knew how to care for others, but I don't think I learned how to truly listen until I realized how badly I needed to be heard and acknowledged as a young gay man growing up in the Deep South.

What is one interesting fact about you?

I worked regularly as a drag queen part of the time that I was studying architecture at Auburn University. Publicly playing with and pushing gender norms to their breaking point in rural Alabama was a pretty formative experience. It was also definitely a welcome creative outlet alongside my architecture coursework.

Share a quote that guides what you do personally or professionally. 

This is a new quote to me, so I'm still trying it on for size, but as the Atlanta-based drag queen Tamisha Iman says: "Every competition you don't have to win... sometimes you just have to show up." I admire the combination of ambition and humility, the grit really, in that statement. You have to give yourself grace and the chance to fail and learn, which is really a gift - if you ultimately want to succeed.

What's one piece of advice do you have for LGBTQIA+ students at Wentworth?

Spend some time with your queer elders. Listen to their stories; those are your stories too. And then remember, later on, to invest in the generations that come after you. We don't inherently have the benefit of intergenerational storytelling and identity that many other groups do. Just as we have to find one another, we also have to find our shared story.

List any publications, awards, or achievements you received.

• Invited Speaker, "Understanding the Countryside Conference" at UC Berkeley (2019)

• Invited Speaker, "Cities, Action, Research & Education Conference" at TU Wien, Vienna, Austria (2019)

• "Queering Housing: Leveraging LA's Newest Intergenerational Queer Space for a Better Housing Policy," article for the LGBTQ Policy Journal, Harvard Kennedy School of Government (2020);

• Large-Scale Public Art Installation, winner (2020)
   

• "Cartographies of Care: Urban Development in Mexico in Response to a Greying America," chapter in Cities, Action, Research and Education: New Perspectives in Urban Studies and Planning (2021)

• "Seeking Landed Security in (De)Industrialized Detroit and (Post)Colonial Mexican Ejidos," article in Critical Planning: UCLA Planning Journal — with Carrie Gammell (2021);

• "Catfish Capital," essay for Harvard Urban Planning Review (theme: Sick Spaces) — with Zac Gaudet and Whitney Johnson (2021)

• Faculty Development Grant: Innovations in Online Teaching and Learning, at the BAC (2021)