Pratt Institute

Personal URL

Education

M.S.A.A.D., Columbia University in the City of New York;
B.Arch., Tulane University

Biography

Lawrence Blough is Tenure Track Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture where he is Coordinator of the Comprehensive Design Sequence in the Undergraduate Architecture program.  In addition to design studios, Lawrence teaches advanced seminars on fabrication and the theory of architectural program.  In 2011, he received funding from the Brick Industry Association to teach a sponsored studio developing precast brick panel prototypes for mid-rise housing.  Before teaching at Pratt, Lawrence taught architecture design studios at Tulane and Catholic.

Lawrence is also principal of GRAFTWORKS Design Research formed in 1999 with the goal to produce small to medium scale work with a high degree of spatial and material innovation. In parallel with practice, the office also undertakes speculative research projects that have been recognized in international publications and exhibitions. The cross-pollination between academia and client based work has fueled the office’s experiments in fabrication and strengthened the play between theory and application. The office work is focused on using current materials and construction technologies in novel ways – what Richard Sennett calls a “domain shift”, when a tool initially used for one purpose can be applied to another task.  Lawrence received his Bachelor of Architecture from Tulane University in 1988 where he was awarded a commendation with special distinction for outstanding thesis. He received his Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University in 1995.

Before founding GRAFTWORKS, he worked in the internationally recognized offices of Peter Eisenman and Antoine Predock and was a Senior Associate in a nonprofit architecture and urbanism research foundation in New Haven CT. His recent design work has been published in the New York Times, Architects Newspaper, Interior Design, Architectural Record, and Space Magazine among others. In 2010-2011, Lawrence was a recipient of New York State Council on the Arts Independent Projects Award to develop an aerated concrete textile block system. He has also received Pratt Faculty Development Grants in 2011, 2009, and 2008 to design and construct installations of three large scale digitally fabricated prototypes.  His current fabrication and design research has been published in the book Matter: Material Processes in Architectural Production by Routledge and presented at peer reviewed conferences such as Offsite: Theory and Practice of Architectural Production at the ACSA Philadelphia, Façade Tectonics 8 at University of Southern California, Acadia 2010 Life In:formation at the Cooper Union, and Input_Output at Temple University.

In professional practice, Lawrence has worked on a diverse range of building types from affordable housing, schools and research facilities, to art museums and private houses. He designed the Highwood Square affordable housing community in collaboration with Ben Ledbetter Architect and the project won a 2011 ABC Excellence in Construction Award in Connecticut.  His projects and collaborations have been exhibited at Temple University, Locust Projects in Miami, CAUE 92 in France, Yale University and Pratt Institute among others, and in 2005 GRAFTWORKS was a finalist in the prestigious P.S.1 / MoMA Young Architects Program. Student work from his teaching research has been exhibited at the Center for Architecture in New York and at the Architecture Biennial in Beijing.  He has recently lectured on his design research at the City College of New York, University of Kansas and Pratt Institute.