Faculty

Robert Kirkbride explores the interplay of memory, identity, ornament and placemaking through design, music, writing and teaching. Dr. Kirkbride is Professor of Architecture and Product Design at Parsons School of Design/The New School, where he received the University Distinguished Teaching Award and served as Dean of the School of Constructed Environments (2016-21). Since 1991, Dr. Kirkbride has directed studio 'patafisico, an architectural design atelier, and he is also the Spokesperson and a founding Trustee for PreservationWorks, a non-profit organization advocating the preservation and adaptive reuse of Kirkbride Plan Psychiatric Hospitals. Robert's projects explore the interdependence of physical and mental infrastructures, and consider forms of knowledge and know-how that are often lost or overlooked, including the impressions of memory and habits on our habitats. Robert designed the Morbid Anatomy Museum, in Brooklyn, NY, with collaborator Anthony Cohn, and authored the award-winning multimedia online book, Architecture and Memory, which focuses on traditions of the mnemonic arts through the lens of two Renaissance memory chambers. Kirkbride has been a visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and architect-in-residence at the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, Italy. At Parsons/The New School, Dr. Kirkbride established the Giuseppe Zambonini Archive at the Kellen Design Archives, and is an ongoing contributor to the Memory Studies Group. Robert received his Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Architecture from McGill University, and a Master of Architecture and Bachelor of Arts in Design of the Environment from the University of Pennsylvania.

Robert's website may be visited at http://robertkirkbride.com. 

Ph.D., History and Theory of Architecture, McGill University, 2003

Master of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, 1990

Bachelor of Arts, University of Pennsylvania, Design of the Environment, 1988

Music: 

Always Becoming (EP, 2023): 4-song cycle released on 7 March 2023 via all major streaming services; a musical collaboration with Melissa Grey & David Morneau, who orchestrated and produced music I composed and performed. Kirkbride - guitars; Grey - theremin, guitar feedback; Morneau - trombone;  Foxmer - paw percussion

Select Design Projects:

Culobocca: ongoing material and formal research 

Memorial Stone for Giuseppe + Claudia Zambonini (2019): Cimitero Monumentale (Verona, Italy). Commission by C. Zambonini. 

Caitlin O’Connor Apartment (2015): 720 sq. ft. residential renovation. Brooklyn (Park Slope), NY. Interiors, furnishings. 

Morbid Anatomy Museum (2014): Adaptive reuse of 4200 sq. ft. industrial building for a 3-story museum for anatomical curiosities, including a library for the permanent collection, an exhibition gallery, café and retail, a lecture space and workshop. Brooklyn (Gowanus), NY. In collaboration with Anthony Cohn, AIA. 

Milstein Duplex (2011): 2500 sq. ft. residential renovation in West Village ("Jane Jacobs") Houses. 

Books + Edited Volumes:

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro (2022/2013) XML Title List: American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Humanities. New open access version with enhanced interactive features relaunched in September 2022 on ACLS HEB, with the support of the University of Michigan Library and Ithaka; reformatted from original multimedia open source and print versions published by Columbia University Press, 2008. 

Geometries of Rhetoric (2010) Guest Editor, Nexus Network Journal, Vol. 12 No. 3 (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, Winter 2010) pp. 363-535. Online access: http://www.nexusjournal.com/volume-12/number-3--november-2010.html (Peer-reviewed journal)

Select recent articles:

• 2022. “Upstreaming.” Places Journal: Field Notes on Design Activism: 5. Eds. N. Levinson and F. Richard. November 2022. 

• 2022. “The Reading Chamber.” Asymptote Journal: April 2022 Issue, ed. Lee Yew Leong. Re-publication of original English text in open-access digital format, accompanied by translations in Italian and Spanish by Anna Aresi and Josefina Massot respectively. By permission of Taylor & Francis (Architecture’s Appeal).

• 2020. Interview, “The Syntax of Space,” by Mark Hage, about Kirkbride Psychiatric Hospitals for Issue 29 of A Public Space journal, Ed. Brigid Hughes, available in print and online (12/2020).

• 2019. “Mnemonics and Pneumatics,” I Stand in My Place With My Own Day Here: Site-Specific Art at The New School, ed. Frances Richard. New York: The New School. Commissioned monograph on Rita McBride’s Bells and Whistles, a site-specific work at The New School’s University Center, pp. 191-94.
• 2019. “Stepping Stones Through Disaster,” Earth Manual Project: This Could Save Your Life, exhibition report. New York: The Japan Foundation, pp. 82-85.
• 2018. “The Many Phantoms of Kirkbride Hospitals of the Insane,” Society of Architectural Historians 2017 International Conference (Glasgow, Scotland). To be included in Architectural Ghosts: 100 Hauntings, a book edited by K. Koehler and A. Lepine, in development. This article provided core material for 9 unique full lectures in F2017–S18, including the National Building Museum, Columbia University GSAPP Historical Preservation lecture series, Athens College, OH, Architecture Practice Talks lecture series at the 53^rd Street NYPL (NYC).
• 2017. "That Dark Cabinet: Building the Morbid Anatomy Museum," Montreal Architecture Review Vol. 3, ed. Olaf Recktenwald. Montreal: School of Architecture, McGill University.
• 2016. "Introduction" to Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, R. Tagliareni and C. Mathews. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, Images of America Series, pp. 7-9.
• 2016. "On Ornament and the Mind," Work 9, ed. Johanne Woodcock. New York: Parsons AAS Interior Design, http://parsonsinteriorwork.org/ornament-and-the-mind/ (retrieved: 11/19/16) 
• 2014. “Rhetoric and Architecture,” commissioned chapter for The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, eds. M. MacDonald, A. McMurry Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• 2014. “Upstream/Downstream,” Cuaderno 53: Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación, eds. M. Cuervo, M. Veneziani and S. Faerm. Buenos Aires: University of Palermo UP, pp. 215-29. ISSN 1668-0227
• 2013. “Veils and Velocities,” Cuaderno 48: Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación, eds. Marisa Cuervo, Marcia Veneziani and Steven Faerm. Buenos Aires: University of Palermo UP, pp. 177-90. ISSN 1668-5229.