Fall 2024 Visiting Reviewers

November 25, 2024
Practitioners and academics from across the country join The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture for our Fall 2024 final reviews, Wednesday, Dec. 4 – Friday, Dec. 6.
Student presenting final work to reviewers

We are pleased to welcome several out-of-town reviewers to the UT School of Architecture this fall. These accomplished practitioners and academics will contribute their insights and expertise as they participate in our Fall 2024 final reviews. 

Thank you for joining us: Grant Alford, Sara Codarin, Billy Fleming, Dan Herman, Ezekiel Jones, Ferda Kolatan, Lindsey Krug, Mary Pat McGuire, Marisa Paz, John Ronan, Jeff Ryan, Daniel López Salgado, Stephanie Sang Delgado, Belinda Tato, Cathrine Veikos, Kathy Velikov, Lois Weinthal, Alex Yuen, Ken Yeh, and Carol Marra. 

Grant Alford

Grant Alford is a Texas-registered architect and an associate professor of architecture at Kansas State University where he teaches design studios at all levels, as well as graduate seminars on new media, drawing, digital technology and craft. He has worked in award-winning architecture firms in New York, New Jersey and Texas, and taught previously at Texas Tech University and Rice University. He recently completed the manuscript for his forthcoming book on craft theory and contemporary architecture. Grant is a graduate of Texas Tech University and Princeton University.

Sara Codarin

Sara Codarin is an Assistant Professor in Architecture at the Lawrence Technological University, College of Architecture and Design. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Ferrara and conducts research in the fields of conservation of cultural heritage, digital craft, ecological issues, and generative AI for storytelling and world-building.

Billy Fleming 

Billy Fleming is the founding Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. He is co-founder of the Climate and Community Project—a climate justice think tank dedicated to connecting movement demands to progressive legislators via applied research on the built environment—co-creator of the organization Data Refuge—an international consortium of scientists, programmers, archivists, librarians, and activists dedicated to securing critical environmental data at risk of erasure during the Trump Administration—and a co-founder of Indivisible—a progressive organizing non-profit with chapters in every Congressional District in the U.S. His recent work includes A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation (Island Press, 2021), Design With Nature Now (Lincoln, 2019), and the digital humanities projects, “Field Notes Toward an Internationalist Green New Deal” and “An Atlas for the Green New Deal.” His forthcoming book, Building Postcarbon Futures (Lincoln, 2025), documents 33 exemplary works of climate justice, built and maintained by social movements and marginalized peoples on six continents. Billy’s writing has appeared in Dissent, The Guardian, Washington Post, Places Journal, LA+, and the Journal of Architectural Education, among others.

Dan Herman

Dan Herman is Managing Principal at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and is SOM's Texas Market Lead. Dan brings an urban sensibility to his work, with a focus on infill and densification through mixed-use development. His projects convert underutilized sites into lively micro-cities that are walkable, transit-oriented and sustainable. Dan brings this city- making approach to more than two decades of managing commercial office, mixed-use, residential, retail and hospitality projects. Balancing his time between SOM's LA and Austin studios, Dan manages an active roster of projects in both cities and leads the firm's growing Texas practice.

Ezekiel Jones

Zeke Jones is an architect living in Los Angeles. He is an associate at Escher GuneWardena Architecture, where he has managed affordable housing, art and historic restoration projects. Currently he is working on the restoration of Richard Neutra’s Lovell Health House. 

Ferda Kolatan

Ferda Kolatan is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design and a founding director of SU11 Architecture + Design, based in New York. He earned his Architectural Diploma from RWTH Aachen and his M.S.AAD from Columbia University. Mr. Kolatan has taught at esteemed institutions, including SCI-Arc, Pratt Institute, the University of Virginia, Columbia University, Cornell University, RWTH Aachen, Washington University, and RPI. His work with SU11 has garnered international recognition and has been exhibited at renowned venues such as MoMA, the FRAC Center, Walker Art Center, Vitra Design Museum, Art Basel, Artists Space NY, the Venice Architectural Biennale, the Architecture Biennial Beijing, and the Istanbul Design Biennial. Mr. Kolatan has contributed to numerous journals and books and co-authored the book "Meander: Variegating Architecture" in 2010. His new book, "Misfits & Hybrids: Architectural Artifacts for the 21st-Century City," was published by Routledge in the spring of 2024.

Lindsey Krug

Lindsey Krug is a designer and educator based between Chicago and Milwaukee, where she is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her work explores the architectural manifestations and myths that shape relationships between people and institutions born of American democracy and capitalism. Krug’s research, design, and teaching have been recognized recently with a 2024 New Faculty Teaching Award from the ACSA and AIAS, the 2024 Rotch Travelling Scholarship, and the 2023 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers from the Architectural League of New York.

Mary Pat McGuire

Mary Pat McGuire is a Licensed Landscape Architect and Associate Professor at the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign where she currently serves as Dean’s Fellow for Research in the College of Fine & Applied Arts. With an interest in urban land as a medium for liberating sites and communities for climate resilience and human well-being, in 2022, McGuire formed Depave Chicago, an initiative to enable communities to remove pavement and transform land into healing and life-supportive landscapes. She and her partners are actively working on their first pilot project in South Side Chicago to break ground in summer 2025. McGuire’s work and collaborations appear in The Plan Journal, Landscape Journal, Journal of Landscape Architecture, Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, Next City, The Nation, Streetsblog USA, and FRESH WATER: Design Research for Inland Water Territories (AR+D, 2019). McGuire earned her Master of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia.

Marisa Paz

Maria Isabel Paz Suarez is an architect and professor at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). She received her Master of Architecture degree from Rhode Island School of Design and her Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Virginia. Ecuadorian born and raised, her roots have invaluably taken her to pursue new visions in architecture focused on the preservation of the biodiversity of Galapagos and the Cloud Forest. Her scholarship brings creative thinking and methods of representation within architectural education. Her research is shaped by design strategies that use drawing as an unconventional form, represented through cyanotypes, textile weaving patterns and imaginary perspectives to envision the future growth of Quito. Founder of Materia Arquitectura, this boutique practice blends and tests the creative side of Marisa, proposing innovative solutions to commercial clients.

John Ronan

John Ronan FAIA is an architect, writer, and educator based in Chicago and Founding Principal of John Ronan Architects where he serves as Lead Designer and known for his abstract yet sensuous work exploring materiality and atmosphere. John holds a Master of Architecture degree with distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Michigan. His work has been exhibited internationally and covered extensively by the international design press. He has lectured widely and there are three publications on his firm’s work. His writings have appeared in books, journals and Poetry magazine. His firm has received numerous design awards, including three AIA Institute National Honor Awards. In 2017, John received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award. He is currently the John and Jeanne Rowe Endowed Professor of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture.

Jeff Ryan

Jeff Ryan, AIA received his Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture in 1996, and currently serves at the Managing Design Principal for Christner Architects in St. Louis, Missouri. Jeff’s work has been recognized with over 30 AIA Design Awards, and a COTE Top Ten Award. His portfolio includes higher education, science, corporate, healthcare, aviation, and cultural projects. His design methodology seeks an architectural beauty that emerges from the specific circumstance of each project and results in places that are genuinely meaningful to the people who inhabit them. Jeff has taught as an adjunct instructor at both UTSOA and at Washington University.

Daniel López Salgado

Daniel López Salgado studied architecture at Universidad La Salle in Mexico City and has accumulated over 25 years of experience in the field of architecture. After establishing his practice in Oaxaca City in 2007, Daniel has since developed a diverse portfolio of projects spanning various scales and disciplines. These include: Projects Colegio La Salle Preescolar, Colegio La Salle Primaria y Secundaria, Museo de Filatelia de Oaxaca, Librería Grañén Porrúa, Hotel City Express Jalatlaco, Hotel City Express San Luis Potosí, Salón de la Fama del Beisbol Mexicano Monterrey, and Museo de los Diablos Rojos del México. He has designed around 30 housing structures, hotels and small buildings. He also worked for 15 years as an assistant teacher for the University of Minnesota Oaxaca Program with Professor Lance Lavine.

Stephanie Sang Delgado

Stephanie Sang Delgado is a Cuban Chinese architect and educator. She is the co-director of office ca, an experimental collaborative practice with Galo Canizares, and an Assistant Professor at Kean University in the School of Public Architecture at the Michael Graves College. office ca investigates alternate methods for art and architectural practice. Through art installations, designed objects/spaces, and interactive media, their projects play with and address the complex forces that shape contemporary culture. Some recurring themes of the practice include absurdity, genre fiction, conspiracy theories, world-making, storytelling, simulation, and the parafictional. Aside from office ca, Stephanie researches food, its colonial legacy to the urban landscape, the cultural value of food images and food equity. Stephanie received her Master of Architecture from The Ohio State University, where she was the Graduate Enrichment Fellow and a recipient of the Architecture Research Travel Award. She received her Master of Arts in Gastronomy from Boston University and her Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies from Ithaca College, where she was a Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar.

Belinda Tato

Belinda Tato is an architect, landscape architect and urban designer. She is founder and director of the firm Ecosistema Urbano established in 2000 in Madrid and recently expanded a U.S. branch in Boston. Both at Harvard and in her practice, Belinda focuses on improving the self-organization of citizens, social interactions within communities, and the improvement of those relationships with the environment. With Ecosistema Urbano, Belinda is responsible for urban strategies and the development of innovative methodologies that incorporate participatory mechanisms with digital tools to allow collaborative network design. Moreover, through her research in climate design in public spaces, Belinda's goal is to create the level of necessary comfort that enables social interaction in public space while providing equity and healthy outdoor lifestyles, especially in regions of extreme climate and vulnerable communities.

Cathrine Veikos

Cathrine Veikos is an architect, professor and former Chair at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco where she teaches architecture and interior design studios, drawing, and seminars on representation. She recently published “The Aesthetic and Political Dimensions of Material Re-use” in Lina Bo Bardi: Material Ideologies, Women in Design and Architecture Series, edited by Mónica Ponce de León (2022) and is the author of the book, Lina Bo Bardi: The Theory of Architectural Practice (2014).

Kathy Velikov

Kathy Velikov is Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Creative Practice at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Kathy is a leader in practice-based design research and education, advancing environmentally responsive, technologically enabled, and climate-positive built environments through rigorous speculation, prototyping, and visualization for responsive architectural material assemblies, resilient urban infrastructures, and territorial practices for decarbonization. She is a recipient of the Architectural League’s Young Architects Award and the Canadian Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture. Kathy is co-editor of “Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape, and the Postnatural” (Actar, 2022) and co-author of “Infra Eco Logi Urbanism” (Park Books, 2015). She is a licensed architect, founding partner of the research-based practice RVTR, and former president of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA).

Lois Weinthal

Lois Weinthal is Professor and Graduate Program Director in the School of Interior Design at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research and practice investigate the relationship between architecture, interiors, clothing and objects resulting in works that take on an experimental nature. Her teaching explores these topics where theoretical discussions in seminars are put into practice in the design studio. She is the editor of “Toward a New Interior: An Anthology of Interior Design Theory,” and co-editor of “After Taste: Expanded Practice in Interior Design,” “The Handbook of Interior Architecture and Design,” and “Digital Fabrication in Interior Design: Body, Object, Enclosure.” She is co-editor of the journal, “Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture.” She studied architecture at Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design. Previous positions include Parsons The New School for Design, The University of Texas at Austin, and Honorary Professor at Middlesex University and the Glasgow School of Art.

Alex Yuen

Alex Yuen is a co-founder and the Director of Design at CO-, an architecture, urban design, and real estate development firm based in San Francisco. As a single studio that engages in both design and real estate development, CO- balances concern for the character of its design investigation with handling the critical externalities that enable its ideas to become realities. Yuen is also currently a faculty member at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and has previously taught at the California College of Arts and the University of Virginia. Prior to CO-, he worked at a number of Architectural and Urban Design firms around the U.S. and Asia, including Diller Scofidio + Renfro and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). He is a registered architect in California.

Ken Yeh

Ken Yeh is an early adopter of climate-resilient design and has championed net-zero and energy-positive architecture since the late nineties. His global project portfolio spans urban and regional locations across Australia, Asia, and the United States. With a Bachelor of Architecture from The University of Texas at Austin, Ken’s experience and expertise include designing precincts and masterplans, community and cultural projects, multi-family dwellings, highly detailed homes and custom furniture. He is regularly sought to lead feasibility studies, concept development and complex community engagement programs. As the descendant of a long line of builders and property developers, Ken credits his heritage as helping shape his holistic approach — always ensuring a seamless transition from design to construction. In 2021, Ken was named as one of the top 9 Malaysian architects by Culture Trip.

Carol Marra

Carol Marra is an award-winning architect and Churchill Fellow specializing in sustainable and climate-resilient design. For over 25 years, her architecture, advocacy and research have guided the success of city-based and regional projects in Australia, Asia, and the United States. Experienced both in private practice and government advisory roles, she is regularly called upon to design residential precincts and masterplans, community projects and custom homes. Carol also provides design review and technical advice to public projects through various government agencies. For several years she was engaged as Principal Design Advisor at the Government Architect NSW, chairing the State Design Review Panel and contributing at a strategic level to State Significant projects and policies. Carol holds a Bachelor of Architecture from The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture.