Lori Gibbs

Dr. Lori Gibbs is Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute in the School of Architecture. She teaches global architectural history and theory courses alongside design studios in New York and Rome. Trained as both an architect and historian, her research investigates how drawing, design, conservation, and heritage practices construct cultural knowledge about the built environment.

Working across archives, sites, and historical frameworks, her scholarship bridges architectural design, history, heritage conservation, and built practice to question environmental, social, and cultural issues. She has received multiple research fellowships from institutions across the U.S., Canada, and China. Her previous academic appointments include teaching at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Hong Kong.

Recent publications examine architectural and urban histories in cross-cultural contexts, revealing how buildings and their representations mediate history, heritage, and contemporary life.

PhD in Architecture, University of Pennsylvania

M.A. Histories & Theories, Architectural Association, with distinction

B.Arch, Pratt Institute, with honors

Forthcoming publications:

Lori Gibbs, “More than “data”: Taking a close look at the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) Field Notebooks from the 1930s” in Change Over Time: An International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment, University of Pennsylvania Press (accepted, forthcoming 2025).

Lori Gibbs. “Envisioning Maritime Macau: Built Heritage and the Ideation of History” in Hybrid Marines, ed. Brian Briggs and Gabriel Gee, TETI Press (forthcoming 2025).

Selected publications:

Lori Gibbs. “Looking Beyond the Image of ‘the Wasteland’: Newark, New Jersey,” Changing Representations of Nature and the City: The 1960s-1970s and their Legacies, ed. Gabriel Gee and Alison Vogelaar (Routledge, 2017).

Lori Gibbs. “The Guangzhou Opera House: Dissonances in the Architecture of Cultural Reform,” Re-living the City: UAAB 2015 Catalogue, Gideon Fink Shapiro and Aaron Betsky eds.(Actar, 2016).

Lori Gibbs and Matthew Pryor, “Designs on the Future: The Teaching of Sustainability”,Eco-City and Green Building Magazine, translated by Xing Yaoyun. (Joint Publishers: School of Architecture of Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Urban Planning and Design Institute, 2014).

Lori Gibbs. “Ford Point Factory Renovation,”Vitamin Green, ed. Phaidon Editors. (London: Phaidon Press, 2012) 98.

Lori Gibbs. “Constructing Collaborative Networks: Editorial Publications that Fuel Architectural Production” Net Works: An Atlas of Connective and Distributive Intelligence in Architecture, (eds) Brett Steele and Francisco Gonzales de Canales, (London: AA Publications, 2012).

Lori Gibbs. “Fast Food In Paradise” and “Observations on Mecca,” Log 10, Observations on Architecture and the Contemporary City, Summer/Fall 2007 (New York: Anyone Corporation, 2007) 80, 88.