Archinect
Quilian Riano

Quilian Riano

New York, NY, US

 

About 

Pratt Institute Dean
DSGN AGNC founder

Quilian (pronounced: Killian) is the Dean of Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, working across the school’s architecture, landscape, urban design, planning, and management programs. Quilian also serves as the Vice President for Architecture of the Architectural League of New York. 

Quilian founded and leads DSGN AGNC, a design studio exploring new forms of cooperative design, processes, and engagements through architecture, urbanism, landscapes and art. Quilian and DSGN AGNC’s design work has been featured at the Venice Biennale, Queens Museum of Art, Harvard University, The Storefront for Art and Architecture, The New Museum, the Center for Architecture, the Architectural League of New York, among others. For this work, Quilian has won awards from the Vilcek Foundation, the American Society of Landscape Architects, Harvard University, The Boston Society of Architects, and the University of Florida and received fellowships from the Design Trust for Public Space, Institute for Public Architecture, and the J. Max Bond Center for the Just City at CUNY, among others.

Over the last few decades, Quilian has taught undergraduate and graduate studios in architecture, urban design, art, and transdisciplinary design at Harvard University, Columbia University, Carleton University, Parsons The New School of Design, The Pratt Institute, Syracuse University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, the City College of New York, and Kent State University. Quilian is an initiator and core member of Dark Matter University, a democratic network committed to creating new forms of knowledge and knowledge production, institutions, collectivity, practice, design, and community culture.

EDUCATION

Quilian holds a Masters of Architecture (MArch) from the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) and a Bachelors of Design in Architecture (BDes) with Summa Cum Laude from the University of Florida’s School of Architecture.

Elsewhere:

Quilian's Design Blog on Archinect:

Design and Agency

Thoughts on the built environment, design, agency, and activism.

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Quilian's School Blog on Archinect:

Harvard University - GSD (Quilian)

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Quilian's Featured Articles on Archinect

Gaming the System: role-playing spatial and political change, Thu, Sep 1 '16

"[The] sovereign art, of course, will be the one whose laws rule over the relations among men in their totality. That is, Politics.Nothing is alien to Politics, because nothing is alien to the superior art that rules the relations among men.Medicine, war, architecture, etc. – minor and ...

Gaming the System: role-playing spatial and political change
 

UpStarts: WORKac, Tue, Sep 18 '07

The one thing you will not find in school--or even on Architecture Registration Exams--is a course on how to get work, yet it is one of the most basic needs of any design practice. In fact, if you don't have an equal ability to experiment in getting work as you do in doing work you would be ...

UpStarts: WORKac
 

Employment 

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, US, Dean

Jan 2021 - current
 

DSGN AGNC, DSGN AGNC Founder and Principal

Jan 2009 - current
 

Kent State University Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, Cleveland, OH, US, Associate Director

Aug 2019 - Aug 2021
 

Kent State University, Cleveland, OH, US, Faculty, Graduate Architecture and Urban Design Studios

Aug 2019 - Aug 2021
 

Columbia University, New York, NY, US, Adjunct Assistant Professor (Urban Design)

May 2019 - Aug 2019
 

The New School, New York, NY, US, Part-Time Assistant Professor

http://dsgnagnc.com/quilian-teaching/

Jan 2009 - Aug 2019
 

NYC Department of Design and Construction, Senior Strategic Design Initiatives Specialist (Strategy/Urban Design and Project Management)

Aug 2017 - May 2019
 

City College of New York (CCNY), New York, NY, US, Lecturer - Urban Design Studio

http://dsgnagnc.com/quilian-teaching/

Jan 2010 - May 2016
 

Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston, MA, US, Adjunct Professor

http://dsgnagnc.com/quilian-teaching/

Jan 2010 - Aug 2010
 

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, US, Design Studio Instructor || Researcher

http://dsgnagnc.com/quilian-teaching/

May 2004 - Apr 2010
 

Education 

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, US, MArch, Architecture

Aug 2006 - May 2009
 

University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, US, Bachelors, Architectural Design

May 2001 - Apr 2004
 

Awards 

Venice Biennale Exhibitor and Featured Project, Other

Exhibited: http://whownspace.blogspot.com/
Featured Project: http://dsgnagnc.com/uic-casamare/

2012
 

Areas of Specialization 

Skills