September 22, 2010

Frank de Santis joins us as an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Architecture & Interiors. He previously taught at the College of Architecture and Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.  A practicing architect and designer since 1993, de Santis was an Associate at Polshek Partnership Architects in New York where he was project designer for the Ambulatory Care Pavilion at the Zucker Hillside Hospital and project designer for the Master Plan for the Ithaca Campus of Cornell University.  Previously, he had worked at Robert A.M. Stern Architects and in the Chicago office of Hammond, Beeby & Babka.  He received his Bachelors of Arts and his Master of Architecture degrees from Yale University.

In his ongoing research, de Santis is investigating the changing status of architectural ornament in order to propose a critique of reductive architectural practices and to explore how craft experience might support a complex and inclusive understanding of what it means to build well.