Jonathan Phillips
Bio
Jonathan Phillips was born in Heidelberg, Germany and he grew up in Munich and Austin, Texas. He earned a Bachelor of Architecture with Honors and a Bachelor of Plan II Honors Liberal Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998. His undergraduate thesis, entitled Community and Dwelling: Vitality for America’s Public Housing, was completed under the supervision of Dr. Standish Meacham, Jr., Professor Emeritus of History, and Dr. Danilo François Udovički-Selb, Associate Professor of Architecture. From 2000 to 2004, Jonathan was awarded a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellowship from the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the City of New York, during which time he earned a Master of Arts and a Master of Philosophy. He was awarded a research and travel grant from the Annette Kade Foundation in 2003 to conduct archival research at the Bauhaus Dessau, the Bauhaus-Archiv, the Wiener Secession, and the Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst in Dessau, Berlin, and Vienna, respectively. In 2004, Jonathan participated in an Exchange Scholar Program with Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His Master of Philosophy thesis, entitled A Theory of Relevance: Argument for a Return to Modernism in the Criticism and History of Architecture, was approved in summer 2005. His committee at the time was chaired by Dr. Peter Bearman, and members included Dr. Harrison White, Dr. Priscilla Ferguson, and Kenneth Frampton of Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.
Jonathan has worked and consulted on behalf of architects in Austin, New York, Linz, and Istanbul. In 1997, Jonathan apprenticed with the architect Fritz Matzinger of Linz, Austria who pioneered an innovative, family-friendly model of housing that has won numerous awards in Austria and Germany and has been documented in a monograph by the Österreichischer Wohnbund. Following his studies at the University of Texas, Jonathan worked for a small New York architectural firm Curtis + Ginsberg Architects, where he performed design development and management for several projects including an addition to the Staten Island Zoo Hospital and a 100-unit affordable housing project in the Bronx. Prior to his study at Columbia, Jonathan worked as Housing Development Coordinator for the non-profit Pratt Area Community Council in Brooklyn, New York where his responsibilities included implementing and administering several multi-million dollar housing and mixed-use development projects conducted jointly with the City of New York.
Jonathan's design interests include environmental and economic sustainability and socially-responsible practices of design. His academic interests include the relationship between the built environment, social interaction, and socio-economic organization, particularly with regard to housing. He applies methodologies of the sociology of language and social network analysis to evaluate the construction, diffusion, and activation of “architectural knowledge.”
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- Curriculum Vitæ | Résumé
- Web Development Portfolio Over the past two years, Jonathan has undertaken a number of freelance graphic and web design commissions. He has designed and developed several independent, user-oriented websites and content management systems on behalf of institutional and private clients. His practice of web development centers on usability, accessibility, and solid communication design.
- New Housing, New York Entry for the 2003 “New Housing, New York Design Ideas” competition sponsored by the City of New York, the American Institute of Architects, and the City University of New York. The ostensible aim of the competition was to “bring together people from diverse backgrounds and interests with the common goal of designing livable, sustainable, and affordable communities through housing.” This entry attempted an academic critique of the preconceptions inherent in the rules and guidelines of the competition itself.
- “A Theory of Relevance: Argument for a Return to Modernism in the Criticism and History of Architecture” Submitted to the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the City of New York in fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Philosophy, November 2004. This paper is a synthesis of what were originally independent eassys. Thanks are due to Harrison White, Kenneth Frampton, Peter Bearman, Ludger Schwarte, Nader Vossoughian, Gina Neff, Michel Anteby, and Daniel Beunza for their comments while this work was in progress.