Jose Sanchez

Jose Sanchez is an architect, game designer, and media artist practicing in New York City. He is the director of the Plethora Project, a research studio investing in the future propagation of architectural design knowledge. He is the creator of the video games Block'hood and Common'hood, digital social platforms that aid in authoring architectural and ecological thinking to non-expert audiences. He is the author of the book Architecture for the Commons: Participatory Systems in the Age of Platforms (Routledge, 2020) and the co-creator of Bloom, a crowdsourced interactive installation, winner of the Wonder Series hosted by the City of London for the 2012 Olympics. His current research, "Mediated Assemblies," designs and interrogates simulation and interactive media as a collaborative, embodied, and situated practice.

Sanchez's position at Cornell is a joint appointment in the multicollege department of Design Tech and at Cornell Tech.

Academic Research/Specialty Areas

  • Architectural design
  • Architectural technology
  • Collaborative practice
  • Community-based planning and development
  • Digital media
  • Installation art
  • Interdisciplinary art
  • Participatory and collaborative planning
  • Technology and art
  • Visual representation

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Classes (Selected)

  • DESIGN 8131 Specialization Project I
  • DESIGN 8395 Specialization Project II

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

  • Official selection for Nuevos Medios (2024), XIII Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism
  • Nominated for Best Civic Game (2023), Games for Change Festival, New York, New York 
  • Microsoft Xbox Game Pass, Platform Publishing and Porting fund for Common'hood (2023)
  • Winner of the 2018 Best Paper Award (2019), The Plan Journal
  • Winner of the Innovative Research Award of Excellence (2019), Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

  • Detroit at Play (2025), NewLab, and Michigan Central, Detroit, Michigan
  • Video Games: The Great Connector (2024), Harlem Gallery of Science, New York, New York
  • Imagine: A Journey into the New Virtual (2023), MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria

Publications (Selected)

  • Sanchez, Jose. Architecture for the Commons: Participatory Systems in the Age of Platforms. Routledge, 2020.
  • Sanchez, Jose. "On the Possibility of Enaction within Synthetic Worlds." In Architecture and Videogames: Intersecting Worlds. Routledge, 2024.
  • Sanchez, Jose. "Entangled Simulations: The Affordances of Narrative within Computational Systems." In Proceedings of the 2022 ACADIA Conference, 2022.

Selected Work

  • A 3D render of two people and a group of cattle pulling a house.

    Screenshot of Minga, video game Installation reenacting the traditional "House Pulling Minga" from Chiloe in the south of Chile. image / Jose Sanchez

  • A 3D render of an isometric diorama showcasing multiple inside and outside ambients of a building and it's surroundings.

    Screenshot of Block'hood, a city-building video game engaging ecological interdependence. image / Jose Sanchez

  • A 3D render of an environment with multiple plants, wooden platforms, and a greenhouse.

    Screenshot of Common'hood, a community-building and resource management architectural platform within a video game simulation. image / Jose Sanchez

  • Side-view of two young people talking, holding consoles, and pointing at a large screen showcasing a videogame.

    Detroit at Play installation, a community engagement initiative in collaboration with The Boys and Girls Club of Southeastern Michigan, and Ishan Pal Singh, Salam Rida, and Torri Smith at the University of Michigan. image / Jose Sanchez

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