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Visiting Faculty

Katie Swenson

  • Gensler Visiting Critic

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Academic Research Areas

  • Architectural design
  • Architectural theory
  • Cities
  • Collaborative practice
  • Community-based planning and development
  • Ecological practice
  • Economic development
  • Housing
  • Infrastructure
  • International studies in planning
  • Participatory and collaborative planning
  • Social justice and equity
  • Sustainability
  • Urbanism
  • Global Practice
  • Health & Wellbeing
  • Memory & Memorial Design
  • Public Narrative
  • Design Leadership

Katie Swenson is a nationally recognized design leader, author, educator, and speaker whose work explores how architecture can advance human dignity, ecological health, and social equity. Since 2020, she has served as Senior Principal at MASS (Model of Architecture Serving Society), leading strategic partnerships that connect design, storytelling, and philanthropy to advance systems change globally. In 2026, she is the Gensler Visiting Critic at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, and has also taught at Parsons School of Design (The New School) and Columbia GSAPP.

Swenson authored Design with Love: At Home in America and In Bohemia: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Kindness, and contributed to Spatial (In)Justice and other books on community design. Before MASS, she was Vice President of Design & Sustainability at Enterprise Community Partners, leading the Rose Fellowship, and cofounded the Charlottesville Community Design Center. She received the 2021 AIA Award for Excellence in Public Architecture.

Katie holds a Loeb Fellowship from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia and a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.

head and shoulders photo of white woman with medium length blonde hair

Academic Research Areas

  • Architectural design
  • Architectural theory
  • Cities
  • Collaborative practice
  • Community-based planning and development
  • Ecological practice
  • Economic development
  • Housing
  • Infrastructure
  • International studies in planning
  • Participatory and collaborative planning
  • Social justice and equity
  • Sustainability
  • Urbanism
  • Global Practice
  • Health & Wellbeing
  • Memory & Memorial Design
  • Public Narrative
  • Design Leadership
  • Aerial image of building with grass roofs.
  • aerial image of Rwandan jungle
  • People seated in a treed courtyard.
  • Aerial view of community cemetery.
  • People walking through an urban greenspace.
  • People seated for discussion in a circle.
  • Aerial view of community site within forested area.

Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund Campus, Musanze, Rwanda. Aerial view of the campus within its restored Afromontane landscape, with the Virunga volcanoes beyond. Care for Ecological Systems. photo / Iwan Baan.

Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA). Aerial view of the RICA campus sited within remnant savannah woodland and wetland along Lake Mpanga. Care for Ecological Systems. photo / Iwan Baan.

Neighborhood Birth Center. Rendering of the birth center’s garden courtyard, designed to feel more like home than institution. Care for Human Dignity. photo / MASS, rendering.

El Cementerio del Barrio de los Lipanes. Aerial view of the Lipan Apache cemetery at the center of its community in the high desert of northern Argentina. Care for Memory. photo / MASS.

Sugar Land 95 Memorial. Rendering of the memorial landscape honoring the 95 incarcerated laborers uncovered near Houston, Texas. Care for Memory. photo / MASS, rendering.

Iftin Peace Hub, Somalia. Interior rendering of a gathering space designed for dialogue, healing, and reconnection to opportunity. Care for Futures.
photo / MASS rendering.

Moving Windmills Innovation Center, Kasungu, Malawi. Aerial rendering of the Innovation Center, organized around livelihoods, agriculture, ecological resilience, and community leadership. Care for Futures. photo / MASS, rendering.

Care is not simply delivered in space. Care is produced by space.

Books

  • Book cover featuring boy doing a backflip.

    Design with Love: At Home in America

    Katie Swenson, Schiffer Publishing, 2020

  • Outline portrait of two people embracing.

    In Bohemia: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Kindness

    Katie Swenson, Schiffer Publishing, 2020

  • Book cover featuring illuminated trailer at dusk.

    Growing Urban Habitats: Seeking a New Housing Development Model

    Katie Swenson with William Morrish & Susanne Schindler, William Stout Publishers, 2008

Publications

  • From Ideas to Impact: Architecture as a Tool for Equity

    Swenson, K. in How Does Spatial Justice Manifest in the Built Environment? Wiley, Spring 2026

  • Designing with Purpose: How Storytelling Empowers Architects to Lead Transformational Change

    Swenson, K. Architect Magazine (2025).

  • Introduction: Design with Love

    Swenson, K. in Environmental Activism by Design, ed. Coleman Coker & Sarah Gamble (ORO Editions, 2023).

  • The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship: An Evolving Role for Community Design in Affordable Housing

    Swenson, K. in Activist Architecture, ed. Dan Pitera & Craig Wilkins (Detroit Collaborative Design Center, 2015).

  • Designing Better Designers: Families First

    Swenson, K. in HUD Cityscapes: A Journal of Policy Development and Research volume 16, issue 2, “Form Follows Family,” (2014).

Selected Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

  • AIA Award for Excellence in Public Architecture

    2021

  • Loeb Fellowship, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

    2019

  • Top Design Innovator Award, HIVE 50

    2018

Selected Exhibitions and Presentations

  • ArchiTalks

    With Gold Medalist Shigeru Ban and Firm Award Winner Duvall Decker, AIA National Convention, San Diego (June 2026).

  • Seeking Abundance

    Lautman Lecture, Washington Architectural Foundation (January 2024).

  • The Combined Housing and Environmental Crises

    Columbia University (September 2023).

  • AFRITECT

    Venice Biennale, 2023.

  • These Are the Gifts

    Contemporaries, Brooklyn, 2020.

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