Chris Perry is Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Education at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s School of Architecture where he oversees the school’s professional and research graduate programs. He is also Director of the Master of Science in Architecture program at the Center for Architecture, Science, and Ecology at Industry City in Brooklyn.

Prior to Rensselaer, Perry was the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Architecture, an endowed professorship, and prior to that appointment he held an endowed professorship at Rice University’s School of Architecture. He has also taught at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, the University of Toronto, the Architectural Association in London, RMIT in Melbourne, Pratt Institute, Barnard College, and Parsons School of Design. 

He received a Master of Architecture from Columbia University, for which he also received an Honor Award for Excellence in Design, and a B.A. in philosophy from Colgate University. Prior to becoming a full-time faculty member at Rensselaer, Perry was a Presidential Fellow in MIT’s doctoral program in architectural history, theory, and criticism.

He is co-recipient of the Architectural League of New York’s Young Architects Award, co-editor of AD: Collective Intelligence in Design (Wiley-Academy), co-chair of ACADIA’s 2015 Annual Conference, as well as co-editor of its proceedings, and a former member of its Board of Directors.

With landscape architect Cathryn Dwyre, Perry is co-principal of pneumastudio, an experimental cultural practice situated at the intersection of architecture, art, and landscape. pneumastudio’s work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Tallinn Architecture Biennale, the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the Design Museum of Barcelona, and the Gallatin Labowitz Gallery in New York. Publishers that have featured pneumastudio’s work include Routledge, Actar, Prestel, and Wiley-Academy.

pneumastudio’s curatorial projects include the exhibition Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape, and the Postnatural which brings together over forty architects, artists, and landscape architects. Initially staged in conjunction with a symposium at the University of Michigan, the exhibition subsequently traveled to the University of Virginia, the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, and the Handwerker Gallery at Ithaca College.

pneumastudio’s editorial work includes a book that features the contents of the Ambiguous Territory exhibition and symposium (Actar Publishers) and a special section of PAJ: A Journal of Performance Art (MIT Press) titled Performance and Architecture.

pneumastudio has conducted artist residencies and fellowships at MacDowell in New Hampshire, Château de Monthelon in Burgundy, France, and the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico.

Perry’s previous design practice, servo, of which he was co-founder and co-principal for eleven years, was featured in group exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Centre Pompidou, MoMA PS1, SFMoMA, Wexner Center for the Arts, Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Architectural League of New York, MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, and Artists Space in New York, as well as solo exhibitions at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, Cornell University, and UCLA. The group’s work is part of the permanent collections of SFMoMA and the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France and has been featured in a number of books by MIT Press, Princeton Architectural Press, Thames & Hudson, Rizzoli, and Phaidon, including a monograph edited by Perry and titled servo: networks and environments published by DAMDI. servo was a finalist in the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program and was selected for the “Design Vanguard” annual issue of Architectural Record, for which Perry was interviewed. Other magazines, journals and newspapers featuring the group’s work include Metropolis, Praxis, AD, a+u, Frame, Yale Perspecta, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times.

Following graduate school at Columbia and prior to co-founding servo, Perry worked for Stan Allen for two years as a project designer, 1997-1999.