Murrye Bernard (writings) is a New York-based architecture and design writer. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree, is a candidate for architectural licensure, and is also a LEED Accredited Professional. Her work appears in publications including Architectural Record, Architect, Eco-Structure, Buildipedia, USA Today and Design Bureau. Additionally, Murrye serves as a contributing editor to Contract magazine and the AIA New York Chapter’s newsletter, e-Oculus. She is participating in the Summer Intensive to refocus her career goals while honing skills in interviewing, researching, analyzing and critical writing. Outside of her writing career, she enjoys traveling, particularly to Italy and Mexico. www.murryebernard.com

Garreth Blackwell (writings) graduated with an M.A. in journalism from the University of Mississippi, and then joined the faculty at the Meek School of Journalism to teach courses in visual communication and photography. As a freelance designer, Garreth formed Wide Open Air, a firm founded on principles of social design. His projects range from school bond issues and community design initiatives to the endeavors of an international pearl company. Currently based in Richmond, Garreth is a second-year student in Virginia Commonwealth University’s interdisciplinary doctoral program in Media, Art, and Text. As a side project, he currently is developing ThisIsOurVA.com to mobilize community in the Richmond area. Garreth is attending the Summer Intensive to better understand and critique the ways in which design impacts us both personally and societally. When not reading for classes, Garreth enjoys craft beer and pickup games of soccer.

Alexandria Brown (writings) received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and a Minor in History of the Built Environment from the University of California, Berkeley. While originally from the faded Art Deco streets of sun-baked Miami, she prefers the cold winds of Eastern Europe where she studied the formation of Post-Soviet identity through architecture in Budapest, Hungary. Undergraduate research on preservation versus destruction of architectural manifestations of history continues to fuel Alexandria’s interest in the relationship between architecture and memory. Alexandria has worked for Surface magazine, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and currently works as a Marketing and Research Coordinator for the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). She is attending the Summer Intensive to improve her writing and to meet others that hold similar lenses with which to see the world.

Irene Chin (writings) holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Pratt Institute and is currently based in Chicago where she freelances as an exhibitions preparator at various university museums and contemporary art galleries. It was while studying in New York and interning at the Storefront of Art and Architecture that she began to foster an interest in non-profit organizations. She hopes to build upon her design background and work experience, and develop her critical voice at SVA this summer as she continues to pursue a career in the public arts sector. She has studied abroad in Rome with Pratt and at Hooke Park with the AA School of Architecture. While traveling, she seeks out museums, sculpture parks, and land art sites, recently having visited Arcosanti. She is planning a trip to Marfa for the end of this year. (blog/twitter)

Daniel Cole (writings) is a designer residing in Richmond, Virginia. His interests center around social design, education, and curation. He is a candidate for the MFA in Visual Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University. His penchant is for collecting very old, and sometimes, very smelly books and artifacts.

Line Ulrika Christiansen (writings) is Director of Design Foundation at VCUQatar. Educated as an interaction designer, she worked several years leading projects at the e1 (Exhibition Unit) of the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. In 2005, she became a co-founder and partner of Id-Lab in Milan. She has exhibited at the V&A Museum, La Triennale di Milano, La Biennale di Venezia, and at the Biennale of Contemporary Art in Seville. Line travels worldwide to international design institutions to teach and lecture her design ideology, design=fiction. She joins the Summer Intensive to explore views of contemporary design, strengthen a critical perspective, and fuel her current fixation connecting the fictional super heroine with the real-life ones in today’s Arab world.

Emma de Crespigny (writings) has a BA in Film and Philosophy and is finishing a Master’s in History of Decorative Art and Design at Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons The New School. She has spent the last eight years working for Alan Moss, whose store specializes in luxurious decorative arts. About to write her thesis (on the use of art deco symbolism in movies of late 1920s and early 1930s and its reflection and impact on modernist ideals), she joins the Design Writing and Research Summer Intensive to strengthen her writing skills, after after being out of practice for a ten-year period. Outside of design, Emma is interested in film, theater, and collecting vintage fashion and twentieth-century decorative art.

Brandy Gibbs-Riley (writings) holds a BA in Studio Art from Bates College and an MFA in Graphic Design from Boston University. She is Associate Professor of Design at Colby-Sawyer College, where she teaches courses on graphic design and design history. She has been an active designer for over sixteen years, working with clients such as Siemens, Humanscale, and the Industrial Designers Society of America. Over the past seven years, Brandy has collaborated with author and historian Alston Purvis on projects including Meggs’ History of Graphic Design fifth edition, for which she served as research associate, curator, editor, and co-author of new material. She is attending the Design Summer Intensive to learn different approaches to writing about design, as she is currently embarking upon new projects of her own. Brandy also loves mid-century furniture, lighting design, painting, printmaking, classical music, and jazz.

Nicole Lavelle (writings) has lived one half her life on the salty shores of San Francisco and one half in the wet green of Oregon. The mythologies and realities of the American West continue to dictate her ideologies, actions and vocabulary.* Nicole received her BA from Portland State University, where she studied Graphic Design and Art and Social Practice (She is currently an adjunct professor in the same program). Her projects are often considered art, design, writing, research, teaching, or walking. She is currently interested in documentation and place. Last summer she rode a bamboo bicycle from Alabama to San Francisco. She comes to the Summer Intensive with an eagerness to understand how design and place are interrelated, and to become a better writer about the discipline of which she is a part.
*Nicole uses the word “hella” on a regular basis, without a hint of irony or affect.

Laurene Leon Boym (writings) received the 2009 National Design Award in Product Design from Cooper Hewitt for her work in collaboration with partner Constantin Boym in the NYC based design consultancy, Boym Partners Inc. Utilizing an education in the plastic arts at SVA (BFA), and in design at Pratt Institute (MID), she helped turn the design industry towards a fresh designer-production model, manufacturing and selling editions like Buildings of Disaster via e-commerce webstore, as well as to private vendors such as Moss. At her core beliefs there is a punk rock DIY ethic that endorses the idea that everyone is a creator, and needs an introduction to simple methods, tools and thinking to make it happen. A native New Yorker, she has resided for the past two years in Qatar with Constantin Boym and their teenage son, Bobby. She is a regular contributor on features for T New York Times Magazine Qatar and a design columnist for Qatar Today. At the Summer Intensive, she hopes to explore a mass-market design critique for all types of media, especially for television. In her spare time she likes to home-brew kombucha, smoke cigarettes, and stand on her head.

Born in Brussels, Adrian Madlener (writings) quickly moved to the East End of Long Island where his father maintained a long-standing residency at the Jackson Pollock Studio. Growing up in a creative household, Adrian’s education focused on critical thinking rather then “teaching to test.” An early interest in architecture evolved into the decision to study industrial design at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands. High school also introduced him to conceptual art, dance, and theater. Adrian has worked with Robert Wilson at his Watermill Center for performing arts for the past 4 years. During Adrian’s design education, his interest in theory, criticism, and gaining a more intellectual context for work developed. He believes that design a has philosophical and sociological value, not limited to the aesthetic configuration of a product.

Megan Marin (writings) is an industrial designer by day and musician by night, currently enjoying the view from Canada on this incredible spaceship that is our home! After graduating from design school last year, she decided it would be fun to start collecting professions in the same way that people collect postage stamps or state quarters. Eventually, everything does connect, and in that spirit she hopes to cultivate a job title that is a hyphen-stitched list of all of the things that are meaningful to her. Megan sees attending SVA’s Design Writing and Research Summer Intensive as the perfect way to continue adding writer-researcher-storyteller to her collection.

Susan Merritt (writings) grew up in the south, graduated from Queens College in Charlotte when it was still an all-girls school, and completed five years of graduate study at the Basel School of Design. She lived in Hawaii for five years before settling down in San Diego. Susan is a graphic designer, heads the Graphic Design program at San Diego State University, and cofounded the nonprofit Design Innovation Institute. Her interests include travel, cross-cultural design, design history, and the arts of the book, especially typography. Her handcrafted books can be found at the New York Public Library, Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, and the Weingart Archive at the Museum of Design, Zürich. Susan is coauthor of The Web Design WOW! Book and author of ancillary materials for Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, edition 4. She lives with her husband Calvin in a 1912 Craftsman bungalow and collects vintage objects and furniture. Susan hopes to hone her research and writing skills and develop new approaches to teaching.

Kelly Murdoch-Kitt (writings) relocated to Berkeley, California in 2009 after completing her Master of Graphic Design degree at North Carolina State University’s College of Design. Her thesis research explored theories of situated learning and experiential elements of virtual communities. Her undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University is in fine art and theatre, and she has more than ten years of professional experience in print design. In addition to doing design research and UX strategy at San Francisco-based gotomedia, Kelly also teaches in the Design Program at University of San Francisco. In her spare time, Kelly likes taking photos, making lists, gardening, hiking, teaching yoga, and finding adventures with her husband.

Lauren Palmer (writings) is a designer, researcher and writer. She recently returned from London after pursuing a MRes in Design at Goldsmiths College. She has an MA in Textile Design from Chelsea College of Art and Design, where she was shortlisted for the Fashioning the Future Awards 2009, and a BA in Biochemistry from The City University of New York. She is looking for opportunities that allow her to explore emerging topics in design. She is interested in value systems, axiology and sustainability. By transitioning from academic writing to professional practice, Lauren hopes to develop her writing voice. She can usually be found in a bookstore or reading New York magazine with a cup of coffee.

JenJoy Robal’s (writings) career spans across sustainable design, urban planning, architecture and public art. She recently left a position at the Buckminster Fuller Institute where she ran the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, an international design competition that awards $100k to a project that is seeking to solve some of our most entrenched global problems.

Chase Stone (writings) is a graduate of Oberiln College and a candidate for the M.A. in Aesthetics and Politics at CalArts in Los Angeles. His interest in design criticism was fostered at Vitra Design: Boisbuchet, where he lived and worked with designers from around the world. Chase focuses on analyzing how the human body reacts, both physically and emotionally, to contemporary design interventions. He is looking forward to working closely with peers at the SVA D-Crit program and exploring critical lenses together. Chase also enjoys listening to house music and reading William Gibson novels.

Caroline Tiger (writings) is a Philadelphia-based freelance journalist, author, and blogger who has been writing professionally since 1999. She worked in book and magazine publishing after studying literature and art history at the University of Pennsylvania. Her journalism career began at a general interest magazine, where she followed her curiosity from story to story. Eventually she found herself writing story after story on design. Caroline’s book credits include a biography of Isamu Noguchi for young adults and City Walks: Philadelphia (Chronicle Books). At SVA, Caroline is excited to meet some like-minded folks, expand her professional opportunities, and take a break from writing to focus on her writing.