Quilian Riano

Quilian Riano is the Dean of Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, working across the school’s architecture, landscape, urban design, planning, and management programs. Quilian also serves as the Vice President for Architecture of the Architectural League of New York. 

Quilian founded and leads DSGN AGNC, a design studio exploring new forms of cooperative design, processes, and engagements through architecture, urbanism, landscapes and art. Quilian and DSGN AGNC’s design work has been featured at the Venice Biennale, Queens Museum of Art, Harvard University, The Storefront for Art and Architecture, The New Museum, the Center for Architecture, the Architectural League of New York, among others. For this work, Quilian has won awards from the Vilcek Foundation, the American Society of Landscape Architects, Harvard University, The Boston Society of Architects, and the University of Florida and received fellowships from the Design Trust for Public Space, Institute for Public Architecture, and the J. Max Bond Center for the Just City at CUNY, among others.

Quilian has also been involved in practices/collectives seeking to transform architecture and education such as being an initiator and core member of Dark Matter University, a BIPOC-led democratic network committed to creating new forms of knowledge and knowledge production, institutions, collectivity, practice, design, and community culture. Quilian has also been a member, part of the executive committee, and served on the board of The Architecture Lobby, an international organization of architectural workers, planners, and designers advocating for the value of architecture in the general public and for architectural work within the discipline. Finally, Quilian worked in the first few key years of Architecture 2030, a nonprofit that seeks to make the building sector central to solutions to the climate crisis, as well as the director of the 2030 Palette project.

Over the last few decades, Quilian has taught undergraduate and graduate studios in architecture, urban design, art, and transdisciplinary design at Harvard University, Columbia University, Carleton University, Parsons The New School of Design, The Pratt Institute, Syracuse University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, the City College of New York, and Kent State University. Quilian is an initiator and core member of Dark Matter University, a democratic network committed to creating new forms of knowledge and knowledge production, institutions, collectivity, practice, design, and community culture.