The Pratt Institute has named Stephen Slaughter as their new chair of undergraduate architecture. Slaughter, who is currently a visiting associate professor at Pratt’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design Program, will assume the role on July 1st 2022.

In his new position, Slaughter will oversee a department of 700 students and 180 faculty, leading a program that has been ranked among the top ten of its kind in the United States every year since 2000 by DesignIntelligence.

“I am thrilled to step into this role at Pratt and look forward to engaging with the community to push forward critical conversations about inclusivity in the fields of architecture and design,” Slaughter said. “Architecture is for everyone and in educating the next generation of architects, I hope to instill this idea. Exuberance, joy, and beauty in design are what I care most deeply about—and that it can be for all.”

Slaughter’s career began at Morphosis Architects, having undertaken his architectural studies at Ohio State University. He has since co-founded PHAT, a four-person, multi-disciplinary design collaborative which has exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem and Center for Architecture in New York. His work has also championed resiliency and sustainability in diverse communities through collaborations with non-profits such as the Watts House Project, Findlay Market, Youth Hope Cincinnati, and Elementz Hip Hop Cultural Art Center.

In addition to his visiting role at Pratt, Slaughter is an associate professor at the University of Kentucky and a visiting associate professor in the School of Architecture and Interior Design at the University of Cincinnati, where he was previously an associate professor. He has also served in roles at SCI-Arc, Woodbury University, the University of Houston, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

News of Slaughter’s appointment comes a week after we featured the work of undergraduate Pratt students who built structures to visualize the impacts and building potential of plastic waste. At the beginning of the year, meanwhile, Pratt’s dean Dr. Harriet Harris was one of a number of leading industry figures who shared their thoughts with Archinect on what 2022 has in store for the profession.

Harris predicted that attention in architecture schools throughout 2022 will gravitate away from technological preoccupations with the pandemic in 2021, and instead focus on “the seismic problems that most preoccupied schools of architecture prior to this - specifically the design and deployment of innovative forms of the climate crisis and social justice curriculum.”