Sonja Bijelic is a registered architect and principal of ArchSTUDIO2227, a Philadelphia architectural firm. She is an award-winning architect with over 25 years of experience. Before founding ArchSTUDIO2227, she worked for Philip Johnson and John Burgee in New York and Hillier Architecture in Philadelphia as an associate principal. 

Sonja gained international recognition for adapting a 1916 Chester, Pennsylvania power plant into a high-tech headquarters and has received numerous awards for various projects throughout the United States...

Clifton Fordham is a registered architect who teaches architectural design, building technology and project planning. He is editor of the book Constructing Building Enclosures: Architectural History, Technology and Poetics in the Postwar Era [Routledge]. Prior to teaching, he was an architect in the offices of KieranTimberlake, Rafael Vinoly, Voith & Mactavish and Gensler. 

Fordham’s primary research area is integrated building design, building enclosures and architectural detailing with a focus on details that regulate the sun. His current...

Gabriel Kaprielian is a designer, artist and educator whose work explores the interconnected relationship of the built and natural environment to inform more resilient and livable cities. The focus of Gabriel’s current work is on climate change adaptation and mitigation. As the recipient of a 2020-21 Fulbright U.S. Scholar award, he will further this body of research in Singapore, working in collaboration with climate change scientists at Nanyang Technological University.
 
Gabriel’s research and creative work has been widely published, presented and exhibited...

Pablo Meninato is an architect, architectural critic and historian whose research focuses on the conception and development of the architectural project. 

He is the author of the book, Unexpected Affinities, where he proposes a historical reassessment of the concept of architectural type and its impact in the design process. In the final portion, the book examines the affinities between the tactics of the readymade, as conceived by the artist Marcel Duchamp, and typological displacement, a question that introduces a reassessment of the correspondences between...

Eric Oskey is a registered architect who engages the intersections between practice, research and education. As a practitioner he is partner of the award-winning firm Moto Designshop (Moto). Moto has won the American Institute of Architect (AIA) Philadelphia’s Emerging Architects Prize; The Great Bell Christ Church Display Competition; the Fallen Heroes Memorial Competition; the 2018 AIA Philadelphia Devine Detail Prize; the 2018 AIA Pennsylvania Bronze Medal and the 2019 AIA Philadelphia Silver Medal, as well as numerous others. Additionally, in 2018 he was individually awarded a prize as...

We deeply mourn the loss of beloved faculty member Vojislav Ristic, a professor in Tyler's Architecture program who passed away unexpectedly on July 17, 2021, from complications of a chronic medical condition.

Professor Ristic joined the Tyler faculty in 2008 and served as a mentor to nearly every architecture student during his tenure, teaching essential courses on structures, building technology, and design. He had an active design practice, ArchSTUDIO2227, with his wife, Sonja Bijelic, an adjunct associate professor of architecture at Tyler. His research focused...

Robert Shuman’s practice is dedicated to the making of consequential works in real space and time, with craft and consideration both of their sustenance of essential human experience and appreciation of their impact on our common environment. He considers the architecture of both large scale buildings and small scale furniture pieces as the careful assembly of elements with fundamentally different (and often contradictory) physical, economic and experiential properties. He believes architecture owes as much to thoughtful construction as it does to intellectual explication. This perspective...

Andrew John Wit leads research focused around novel building systems generated through composites, emerging tools and robotic systems. He is a co-founder of the interdisciplinary research group wito*, Laboratory for Intelligent Environments; a co-editor of the books, Towards a Robotic Architecture and Recalibration: On Imprecision and Infidelity, the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA)’s 2018 conference papers proceedings and project catalog.  

Wit has been an elected member of ACADIA’s board of directors, where he chaired the...

William Bourke is an architectural designer and educator whose research looks at Urban Church Adaptive Reuse and the impact cultural institutions have on cities and their communities. Through explorations focused on history, design and cultural heritage, his work looks to promote deeper thinking and create more meaningful connections between the existing fabric and new architecture interventions.

MArch, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
BA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University

Alfred Dragani is a founding principal of Dragani Martone Studio | dMAS, a Philadelphia-based architecture, planning and interior design studio focused on sustainable and innovative design strategies for the adaptive reuse of existing buildings. The studio has developed a body of project-based research designed to leverage the embodied potential in existing buildings, infrastructure and open spaces to provide a framework for future sustainable development and connectivity between people and places.

MArch, University of Pennsylvania
BSArch, Catholic University of America

Dan Garofalo, AIA is an architect, urbanist and sustainability professional and principal at Dan Garofalo, Architect. His professional career includes both architecture and urban design and more than 20 years as sustainability director and university architect in higher education. He currently serves as the vice chair of Philadelphia’s Civic Design Review Committee.

Master of Government Administration, Fels Institute of Government, University of Pennsylvania
MArch, University of Pennsylvania
BS Arch, University of Virginia

Ken Jacobs has more than 30 years of progressive professional experience in historic preservation, project-based research, architectural work and construction administratio. He is interested in the adaptive reuse of 18th- through early 20th-century American buildings in rural, suburban and urban environments.

PhD, University of Pennsylvania
MA, University of Pennsylvania
BArch, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
BSEd, Temple University

Timothy Kerner is the principal of Terra Studio, LLC, an architecture firm in Center City Philadelphia that focuses on residential and educational architecture and community planning. His research focuses on the relationship between architectural form, the urban environment and social history.

MArch, University of Pennsylvania
MCP, University of Pennsylvania
BA, University of Pennsylvania

Elizabeth Lovett Keshet is the design principal of Lovett Keshet Studio, a practice that creates new forms with innovative construction methods to achieve unique concepts. Her interest in the language of geometry and the pragmatic constraints of materials and construction has led to an expertise in advanced manufacturing and building practices, particularly with surface curvature.

MArch, Harvard University 
BArch, University of Pennsylvania

Kevin Moran is a Senior Manager with the Urban Land Institute (ULI) where he supports sustainable and thriving communities throughout the Philadelphia region. He has an extensive nonprofit management and economic development background, having previously served as executive director for the Northern Liberties BID and Fairmount CDC.

MA, Villanova University
BS, Villanova University

Christopher Renn is an Associate at Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, an internationally recognized design firm known for their humane and responsive design approach. With more than 15 years of professional experience, he has helped lead award-winning projects in a wide range of scales and circumstances.

MArch, Pennsylvania State University
BArch, Pennsylvania State University

Amy Rivera is the owner of the structural engineering consulting firm, Rivera Structural Design, LLC. She is an appointed member on the Board of Building Standards for Philadelphia's Department of Licenses & Inspection.

MS, Drexel University
BS, Drexel University

Wendy Sumida is a registered architect and co-founder of Via Laulima, a Philadelphia-based interdisciplinary design firm. Her academic and working philosophy is founded on integrated design thinking, which emphasizes the importance of process through collaborative engagement and diversified inquiry to produce transformative solutions through the medium of product and space.

MArch, University of Pennsylvania
BArch, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Marianna Thomas, founder/principal of Marianna Thomas Architects, sees every project as both place-making and storyline in which occupancy by new users is a chapter. Her teaching connects aspirational UNESCO guidelines and patterns of everyday environments with the many dimensions of cultural heritage, including geography, climate, economic history, power relationships, beliefs, literature and arts.

MArch, University of Pennsylvania
BA, Oberlin College

Margaux Van Houtte is an architect and educator whose work explores narrative and place. She is interested in understanding dwelling as a means of achieving a space that delights the senses, engages the soul and memory, actively involves and empowers.

MArch, Rhode Island School of Design
BAS, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
BA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

As a Philadelphia-based designer for Coscia Moos Architecture, Jake’s professional work focuses primarily on residential and mixed-use projects. His designs are shaped by a personal background in handcraft and a belief that architects should be responsible for not only the environmental sustainability of their work but also the ways buildings sustain us emotionally and spiritually.

MArch, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
BSArch, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University

Professor Knowles’ research focuses on the study of urbanism, architectural history and most recently on the sensual and haptic aspects of architecture. She has been exploring and documenting the theoretical underpinnings of a concept that seems to have disappeared from the world of architecture, namely comfort in architecture and the notion that architecture can potentially be a curative power through the embodiment of all the senses. The architectural work within her atelier, BJC/Knowles, has been primarily focused on buildings that serve children with either physical or mental disabilities. The work of the atelier has been published internationally.