Milton Curry
Associate Professor of Architecture
Director, Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA)
Affiliate Faculty, Program in Real Estate
Affiliate Faculty, Center for the Study of Inequality
msc10@cornell.edu
119 West Sibley Hall
607.255.1845
Education
Master of Architecture Post Professional, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1st in Class with distinction, 1992
Bachelor of Architecture, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1988
Alpha Rho Chi Medal Recipient Cornell Study Abroad, France, 1987
Bio
For more than 18 years, I have been engaged in multi-disciplinary work that includes architecture and design, urbanism, industrial design, cultural theory, and real estate development. My critical interpretations of the intersections between urbanism and race, economic behavior and public policy, and commerce and identity, require fundamental consideration of the formation of capitalism and concepts of class difference, as well as racial difference in the context of architectural and urban space. The critical and productive capacity of architecture and urbanism are revealed in my theoretical and pragmatic propositions for reshaping the discourse of urbanism around questions of class, spatial equity, and the diversification and expansion of public space. The territories of ghettoes, barrios, inner cities, big-box retail sites, public space, and retail space reveal cultural and political ideologies at work.
In linking architecture and urbanism, OrbitMCAdesignstudio (founded 1995) and Orbit Development Group, LLC (founded 1999) utilize urban real estate development as the platform from which to create innovative and experimental urban space. In linking architecture with cultural theory, Appendx Journal (1992) and associated seminars and writings illustrate the signification of architecture within historical and ideological constructions of class difference, and social and cultural hierarchies based upon racial and ethnic difference. In linking the arts with contemporary culture, the Cornell Council for the Arts (director since 2002) is creating a new model for the catalyst role that the arts can and should have within the academy and cities by linking a broadly considered arts agenda with cultural literacy and social consciousness.
Through teaching, design and real estate development practice, and the arts, I am energized by the dynamism that results from hybrid activity linked by a common thread of deeply considered and contemporary social and cultural challenges – challenges that both shape these disciplines while simultaneously requiring a fundamental reconsideration of them as critical and productive forces.