Lori Gibbs
Visiting Associate Professor
Biography
Lori M. Gibbs, Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, is a designer, researcher, and educator. She completed her Ph.D. in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 2021. Her dissertation was nominated for the Carter Manny Award in 2020, awarded a Collection Research Grant, by TD Bank Group, at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in 2015, and she received First Prize from the Will Morris Mehlhorn Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.
Investigating the interconnections between theoretical discourse and making processes in architectural design orients her approach to scholarship, practice, and education. She currently teaches 5th-year Degree Project Research and Design Studio, and History/Theory courses at Pratt Institute.
Recent publications include: “Looking Beyond the Wasteland, Newark, New Jersey” in: The Changing Representations of Nature and the City: The 1960s – 1970s and their Legacies (Routledge, 2017). This book chapter studies Newark’s architectural history and challenges the city’s prevailing image as a ‘wasteland’ in physical, social, and environmental terms. Her forthcoming, “Envisaging Maritime Macau: Built Heritage and the Ideation of History” examines how past and present architectural drawings and documentation of Macau reshape historical stories in the present. Other articles have been published by Actar, Franklin University in Switzerland, and Phaidon Press.
Her dissertation titled: “Crafting Evidence and Making Measurements: the Architect-As-Surveyor in the 1930s-1940s” analyzes architects’ surveying drawing methods in practice and education within a transnational context through three interconnected case studies. This research interrogates the process of survey drawing – often assumed to be technical and objective – by examining the role of aesthetics in the drawing process, the dissemination of architectural design knowledge, and its formulation into historical facts and heritage sites. She was awarded a 2022 SoA Pratt Faculty Fellowship to continue working on this project.
Previously, she taught graduate and undergraduate design studios and courses on topics of: architectural history, urbanism, ecology, and culture at the University of Pennsylvania, and at the University of Hong Kong where she also taught an MLA research seminar on green roofing and wall technologies. She collaborates with her partner Luis Costa on various design/build projects that address issues of conservation, sustainability, and urbanism. Previously she worked as an architectural designer at Rafael Viñoly Architects and at Plan Design Group.
Education
PhD in Architecture, University of Pennsylvania
M.A. Histories & Theories, Architectural Association, with distinction
B.Arch, Pratt Institute, with honors