Justin Fowler teaches studios in architectural design and housing, along with seminars in history and theory in the urban architecture specialization. His doctoral work centers on Pragmatism and the tectonic aesthetics of social and psychological relief in U.S. architecture and urbanism from the late 19th Century to the New Deal, and his contemporary research concerns public health and precarity in the built environment, climate action, aesthetic theory, housing, aging populations, narrative practices, games, and exchanges between physical and digital media environments. His writing has appeared in publications such as Architectural Histories, Volume, Harvard Design Magazine, Thresholds, PIN-UP, Domus, Journal of Urban Affairs, and Topos, and he has given talks at the GSD, the University of Virginia, the Cooper Union, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture, among others. He is an editor of Public Natures: Evolutionary Infrastructures by Weiss/Manfredi (Princeton Architectural Press, 2015) and a founding editor of Manifest: A Journal of American Architecture and Urbanism, the recipient of two grants from the Graham Foundation. He has worked as a designer for Dick van Gameren Architecten in Amsterdam, Somatic Collaborative in Cambridge, and managed research and editorial projects at the Columbia University Lab for Architectural Broadcasting (C-Lab) in New York.

PhD Candidate - Princeton University School of Architecture
MArch - Harvard University Graduate School of Design
BA - The College of William & Mary

Courses and Studios

ARCH 607: Track II Seminar on Urban Architecture Research and Climate Justice (Portland)
ARCH 683: Graduate Architectural Design Studio (Portland)
ARCH 4/508: Advanced Design Workshop (Portland)
ARCH 4/584: Intermediate Design Studio (Portland)
ARCH 4/537: History and Theory of Urban Design II (Portland)
ARCH 4/507: Ecologies of Health (Portland)
ARCH 384: Introductory Architectural Design Studio IV (Eugene)

Selected Papers and Publications 

"Homelessness is a housing problem: How structural factors explain U.S. patterns, by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern," in Journal of Urban Affairs (2023). [Book Review]

"Ground Rules: Strategic Abstraction in Terrace" in Playing Place: Board Games, Popular Culture, and Representations of Architecture, Space, and Place, eds. D. Medina Lasansky and Chad Randl (MIT Press, 2023).

"Masterly Confusion: Ported Protection in the American Interwar" in From Ration Cards to Refugee Camps: Architecture, Bureaucracy, and the Global State of Emergency during World War I, special issue of Architectural Histories, EAHN (2022).

"Vibe Check: Bright Lights, Fragile Methods" in PLAT Journal 10.0 "Behold," Rice Architecture (2021).

"Salutogenic Energies," e-flux Architecture (2019).

“Modernity and Relief: Burnham Hoyt’s Boettcher School,” session on Architecture and Disability, 71st Annual Conference, Society of Architectural Historians, Saint Paul (2018).  

“Staging Rootedness: Architecture, Progress, and Protection, ca. 1939,” Berkeley/Stanford Symposium: Not at Home: Migration, Pilgrimage, and Displacement in Art, Design, and Visual Culture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017).  

“Bringing Back the Front: Relieving the Great War,” in Harvard Design Magazine, No. 42, “Run for Cover” (2016).  

“‘Working in New Lines’: Registers of Relief in the Studies of Henry Rutgers Marshall,” 69th Annual Conference, Society of Architectural Historians, Pasadena (2016).  

“Pleasure-Pain: Henry Rutgers Marshall and the Architectures of Management,” Object Emotions, Revisited: An Interdisciplinary Conference, Yale University Departments of English, Comparative Literature, and the History of Art (2015).  

“Elastic Compensation: Lewis Mumford’s The South in Architecture,” in Volume magazine, No. 41, “How to Build a Nation” (2014).  

“Victor Bisharat and the City that Works,” with Dan Handel, essay in PIN-UP magazine, No. 10 (2011).  

“Aging-in-Place: New York City’s Captive Population,” with C-LAB, in Volume magazine, No. 27 (2011).  

"Presenting the Real: A Tasting Menu," in Urban Interventions: Prague, Bratislava, Brno, ed. Matus Vallo; Slovart (2011).

“Human Shields: The Surface as Avatar,” in Topos, No. 76, “Crisis Landscapes” (2011).  

“Aggregation,” with Nader Tehrani, in Material Design: Informing Architecture by Materiality, ed. Thomas Schroepfer, Birkhauser (2010).  

“Against Mastery: Blankness and Contingency,” in Speciale Z Journal. Ecole Speciale d’Architecture, Paris (2010).

"On Geography," in Invention/Transformation: Strategies for the Qattara/Jimi Oases in Al Ain, Harvard GSD (2010).