Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape and the Postnatural

Chris Perry is Associate Professor, Associate Dean, and Director of the Master of Science in Architecture program at the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is co-principal of the experimental art, design, and curatorial practice pneumastudio with Cathryn Dwyre, with whom he was a recipient of the MacDowell Fellowship. Exhibition venues that have featured pneumastudio’s work include the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, and the Design Museum of Barcelona. He received a Master of Architecture from Columbia University, a B.A. in philosophy from Colgate University, and was a Presidential Fellow in MIT’s doctoral program in architectural history, theory, and criticism before joining the faculty at Rensselaer. Chris is a co-recipient of the Architectural League’s Young Architects Award and co-guest editor of AD: Collective Intelligence in Design (Wiley-Academy, 2006), and with Cathryn Dwyre co-editor of a special issue of PAJ:
A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press, 2015). Previously, Chris was the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture at Yale University, an endowed professorship, and a principal of the experimental design practice servo, which exhibited
and published extensively between 1999 and 2010. 

Cathryn Dwyre is Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute where she is a member of the interdisciplinary research group Inclusive Ecologies. She is co-principal of the experimental art, design, and curatorial practice pneumastudio with Chris Perry, with whom she was a recipient of the MacDowell Fellowship. Exhibition venues that have featured pneumastudio’s work include the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, and the Design Museum of Barcelona. Cathryn received a Master of Landscape Architecture from
the University of Pennsylvania after receiving a B.A. in philosophy and geology from Colgate University. She previously served as managing editor of ViaBooks and its volume Dirt (MIT Press, 2012), and with Chris Perry is co-editor of a special issue of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press, 2015). Prior to her design and academic career, Cathryn spent over ten years in leadership of technology startup companies and currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Basilica Arts, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization located in Hudson, NY.