Robert Kirkbride

Robert Kirkbride’s practice centers on memory, identity and the constructed environment. Since 1991, Dr. Kirkbride has directed studio ‘patafisico, an architectural design and research studio, and he is professor of architecture and product design at Parsons School of Design/The New School, where he received the University Distinguished Teaching Award, established The Giuseppe Zambonini Archive, and served as Dean of the School of Constructed Environments from 2016-21. Robert is also spokesperson and a founding trustee for PreservationWorks, a national non-profit organization advocating the preservation and adaptive reuse of nineteenth century Linear “Kirkbride” Plan psychiatric hospitals. Dr. Kirkbride has been a visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and architect-in-residence at the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Architecture from McGill University, and a Master of Architecture and BA in Design of the Environment from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Kirkbride’s projects explore relationships of habits and habitations, and the interdependence of mental, physical and social infrastructures in making place and memory. In addition to residential projects, exhibitions, furniture, and speculative objects, Dr. Kirkbride designed the Morbid Anatomy Museum with collaborator Anthony Cohn, AIA, and he authored and designed the award-winning multimedia online book Architecture and Memory, which reconstructs the poetic and political uses of two memory chambers from the Italian Renaissance. Prior to joining Parsons/The New School faculty in 2005, Robert was a co- founding partner of the furniture design company, Studiolo, and the low-impact landplanning company, Hawk Circle. His designs and research have been featured widely in international exhibitions and publications. Robert has been an editorial board member of the Nexus Network Journal and Alphabet City, a visiting critic at the University of Edinburgh, a guest professor at the University of Montréal, and conducted design charrettes at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. - Provided by Publisher