Faculty

Mark Bechtel is an Assistant Professor of Product Design, and a researcher and writer, teaching in the MFA Industrial Design and BFA Product Design programs at Parsons School of Design.  His research draws upon the work of artists, programmers, and designers to inform computational design methods that are holistic.  At a time when the widening scope of demands on design increasingly exceed conventional limits of practice to meet the challenges of climate change, data competency is essential to achieving more sustainable and life-centered solutions for product and industrial design.

He has served as the Chair of the curriculum committee for The School of Constructed Environments for the last nine years, and his recent work includes an essay on the artwork of Jean-Luc Moulène published for a forthcoming exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, a presentation for A Focus on Pedagogy at the Art, Media, Politics, and Society Conference (2022), London, and an art exhibition completed during his residency at LASANAA, Kathmandu, Nepal.

He holds a BFA in Sculpture from the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH, and MFA degree in Visual Arts from Columbia University, New York, NY.

BFA Sculpture with a minor in Ceramics, The Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH

MFA Visual Arts, Columbia University, New York, NY