Swati Piparsania

Swati Piparsania (b. Bhilai, India) is an interdisciplinary designer and educator based in New York City, currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Pratt Institute. She holds an MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Furniture and Spatial Design from Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology in Bangalore, India. Swati’s practice is rooted in justice-centered community engagement and play based learning where design becomes a tool for creative and alternative system building. Through participatory pedagogies, equity-driven methods, and creative collaboration, she works with public school teachers, scientists, pedagogues, and neighborhood organizers to develop design interventions that support social change.

She is the founder of the Participatory Ecologies Lab at Pratt Institute and the Principal Investigator of the award-winning Climate Stories project. She is a grant recipient of the Architecture League, Taconic Fellowship, K-12 Fellowship, The Laundromat Project, the Faculty Development Fund, Academic Initiative Fund and SEED Research Grant. She has participated in the Santa Fe Art Institute residency, the (Un-)Learning Place workshop at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, and the IMPACT 18 symposium at PACT Zollverein, Essen, Germany. She taught Body as Site as faculty at the School of the Alternative in Black Mountain, and recently presented her work at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, RMIT in Melbourne, Australia, School of Form, Poland and Kansas City Art Institute. As a co-curator, she has co-led critically engaged exhibitions such as Undoing the Border Fantasy, Public Food, Public Water and FIELD: Site in Process at Pratt Galleries.

MFA in 3D Design at Cranbrook Academy of Art
Diploma in Furniture and Spacial Design from Srishti School of Art Design and Technology