Phoebe Crisman

Phoebe Crisman AIA is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where she teaches design studios and lectures on architectural theory, urbanism and sustainability. Crisman is Director of the Environments + Sustainability track of the Interdisciplinary Major in Global Studies. She also directs the Global Sustainability Minor, which in conjunction with the Major form the UVA Global Sustainability Initiative. An affiliated faculty member of the McIntire Business Institute's Certificate in Sustainable Business, she is also an associated faculty member of the South Asia Center. From from 2009-2012 Crisman was Associate Dean for Research and International Initiatives for the School of Architecture. During that time, she co-founded and co-directed the UVA India Initiative. In 2014-2015 she was a Richard D. Donchian Fellow in Ethics at the Institute of Practical Ethics and Public Life. Currently Crisman is a Fellow of the Institute for Humanities & Global Culture and was awarded a 2018-2019 Mellon Indigenous Arts Fellowship.

Educated at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Carnegie Mellon University, Crisman conducted post-graduate research as a Fulbright Fellow in the Netherlands. A licensed architect and urbanist with over thirty years of professional experience, she practiced with firms in Chicago, Cambridge and Hong Kong prior to establishing Crisman+Petrus Architects. Her professional work, including the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), the Discovery Museum and Urban Bridges, has been widely published and has received numerous design awards. In 2018 she was awarded the Prize for Public Interest Design by The Branch Museum of Architecture and Design.

In her teaching, research and practice, Crisman focuses on the design of sustainable relationships between specific cultures and built environments. Working in overlooked places and with people underserved by design, she has developed a model of engaged design research to test abstract ideas and create more sustainable communities. Agency through architecture and the critical engagement of complex social and ethical considerations are crucial to this work. Employing ecological and cultural sustainability strategies across multiple scales, she investigates complex relationships between human inhabitation, environmental restoration, and sustainability education. Crisman has extended this research to the international context through her India Initiative research and teaching, which focuses on the specific challenges and opportunities found in the emerging megacities and enduring villages of the Indian subcontinent. This research works across scales from the city to the architectural detail. One aspect of her work engages fragmentary and overlooked places, processes and materials.