Architect, urban designer, and academic Quilian Riano has been appointed the new assistant dean within Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture. He will assume the role on July 12, 2021.
Reporting to School of Architecture Dean, Dr. Harriet Harriss, Riano will work across all four of the school’s departments to help develop and amplify the research-driven, spatial outcomes with real-world impact that have come to distinguish the school’s ambitions and resulted in growing recognition from independent ranking systems. Riano will also assist in the advancement of the school’s established partnerships with city and government agencies, community groups, academic and cultural institutions, and construction industry leaders to ensure that the school continues to be positioned to powerfully advance pedagogy, public policy, and professional practice.
Riano joins Pratt from Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC), where he provided strategy and design coordination across urban design, applied research, publications, and broader academic activities. He has worked in and with public institutions, such as New York City’s Department of Design and Construction as a lead design strategist and the National Park Service as an urban design consultant.
Riano is also the founder and lead designer of DSGN AGNC, a design studio exploring new forms of political design, processes, and engagements through architecture, urbanism, landscapes, and art. Riano/DSGN AGNC’s design work has been featured at the Venice Biennale, Queens Museum of Art, Harvard University, The Storefront for Art and Architecture, The New Museum, the Center for Architecture, and the Architectural League of New York, among others. For this work, he has won awards from the Vilcek Foundation, the American Society of Landscape Architects, Harvard University, The Boston Society of Architects, and the University of Florida and received fellowships from the Design Trust for Public Space, Institute for Public Architecture, and the J. Max Bond Center for the Just City at CUNY, among others.
With over a decade of teaching experience, Riano has taught undergraduate and graduate studios in architecture, urban design, and transdisciplinary design at Pratt, Harvard University, Columbia University, Carleton University, Parsons School of Design/The New School, Syracuse University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, the City College of New York, and Kent State University.
Riano is also an initiator and core member of Dark Matter University, a democratic network committed to creating new forms of knowledge and knowledge production, institutions, collectivity, practice, design, and community culture that expand the circle of those contributing to anti-racist design pedagogy and practice, and build power and share knowledge to build capacity and resilience in communities beyond the preconceived boundaries of design fields.