In its Interviews with Esteemed Faculty series, the School of Architecture shared a conversation with Scott Ruff, adjunct associate professor of undergraduate architecture, and Jeffrey Hogrefe, professor of humanities and media studies, on how they have collaborated on engaging students in issues such as gentrification, working with local communities, and seeing architecture and design as ways to protect places.
The Daily Hub
A roundup of ideas and projects from around the Institute
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The Cannes Film Festival begins on July 6 and the Directors’ Fortnight lineup includes the short Sycorax by Lois Patiño and Matías Piñeiro, assistant professor of film and video.
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Recently for Mental Health Awareness Month, Pratt SGA, Pratt Health Promotion, Pratt Public Safety, the Office of Student Involvement, and ResLife created care packages for students living in Willoughby Residence Hall. “Each bag contained a pair of ear plugs, a sleep mask, face mask, Pratt journal, cat stress reliever, artwork postcard, and a letter from me,” said SGA President Danni Qu, BFA Communications Design ’21. “The artworks for the postcards were collected from Pratt students across all departments and years.”
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The Prattler is hosting a summer web series with recent student stories including Lauren Jonaitis examining the strangeness of COVID time and Nicole Delp discussing the challenges and triumphs of raising Seeing Eye puppies.
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For the final week of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, artist and illustrator Nicole Rifkin, BFA Communications Design (Illustration) ’14, contributed cover art for The New Yorker depicting a reflective, intimate moment of self-presentation and pride: “When I was at Pratt, I visited Desert Island, a gallery/store where I first saw the work of Charles Burns, Jordan Crane, Adrian Tomine, and the Hernandez brothers … I became deeply immersed in those comics, and in finding unique ways of telling stories.”
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Current fashion student Jose Salazar was interviewed for the WWD story “Young Faces of Pride: What the Month Means and What It Shouldn’t”: “I celebrate Pride by trying to engage with what’s happening around my community. Even though society has progressed a lot in the past couple of decades, there is still a long way to go.”
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Kathy Wang, BID ’20, and her BroadAR, Inc. co-founder Ziqing Li were honored with a 2021 San Francisco Design Week Award for Smell Revived, the first virtual reality smell training system targeting post-COVID smell dysfunction.
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Eddie Bautista, alumnus and visiting assistant professor in the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE), was featured in Crain’s New York Business for his work tackling environmental racism through green policies in underserved communities, something that goes back to his childhood in Red Hook: “I made the connection to race, class and our lack of political power and the way our neighborhood was neglected.”
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The inaugural fellows for the New Voices in Architectural Journalism initiative launched by the Architect’s Newspaper in partnership with the Pratt School of Architecture have been announced. Monty Rush, Ekam Singh, and Catherine Chattergoon will be joining the mentor-based journalism program for undergraduate and graduate Pratt architecture students in the 2021-22 academic year.
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The Material Lab at Pratt recently acquired SCOBY leather from multimedia artist Madison Wilds Burger, BFA Photography ’20. The materials are lab-grown from bacteria cellulose cultivated from kombucha
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