A. Sulan Kolatan

Sulan Kolatan is the Principal of KOL/MAC LLC, an architecture and design firm she co-founded with William J. Mac Donald. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute. Her firm has been internationally acknowledged as a leader in digital architecture and technologically innovative design. She holds an MS in Architecture and Building Design from Columbia University and a Dipl. Ing. Arch. degree from the RWTH Aachen, Germany. She has taught at the GSAP at Columbia University from 1989 to 2005 and served as Acting Chair of the Department of Architectural Design and Building Technology at the Technical University in Darmstadt in 2002-03. In addition to serving as a Visiting Chair and Critic at a number of distinguished universities, she frequently lectures and speaks at academic and professional conferences nationally and internationally.

Sulan Kolatan’s work is exhibited and published worldwide, notably, at MoMA New York, USA (multiple); the Canadian Centre for Architecture Montreal, Canada; the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Museum New York, USA; the Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, France (multiple); the Barbican Art Gallery London, UK; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Mori Contemporary Art Museum Tokyo, Japan; the 1st International Architecture Biennial Beijing, China; and VITRA, Germany. Sulan Kolatan has received numerous academic and professional honors and awards, including the “40 under 40” award given in the US every decade to the 40 best architects under 40 years. In 2004, her firm was honored to represent the United States at the International Architecture Biennale in Venice. Her Inversabrane project was nominated for the Zumtobel Environmental Award (Austria) and the INDEX Award (Denmark). Her projects are held in the permanent collections of prestigious cultural institutions including the MoMA New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, the Canadian Centre for Architecture Montreal, the FRAC Orleans, and the Architekturmuseum Frankfurt. She has served as a Juror on several international architecture competitions for the city of Istanbul at the invitation of the Mayor’s Office.

She continues to be involved in international projects, as well as transdisciplinary research focusing on the intersection of design, ecology, and technology. She has received a National Science Foundation Networked Blue Economies Convergence Grant 2021-23 for her transdisciplinary research project titled “Reconfiguring Urban Shorelines for Resilience: Convergence Research Meshing Ecology, Engineering, and Architecture.” As of 2025, she is working on a transdisciplinary education grant and a convening focused on eliminating bottlenecks for piloting innovative shoreline infrastructure design with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.

M.S. Architecture and Building Design, GSAP Columbia University
Dipl. Ing., Rheinisch Westfaelische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen, Germany