Brief background/experiences
With roots in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky extending back three centuries, one might expect that I entertain one of two sentiments; that, on the one hand, I am fully enamored by and attached to the place, or, on the other, that I feel pressured to "get out," as so many of my colleagues do. In a peculiar twist of geography, I have exploited this tension as a productive story-line in my professional and personal journey.

While studying for my BA in Architecture at the University of Kentucky, a school transitioning from its ideological heritage of Colin Rowe and Robert Slutsky to an institution that saw design as a contemporary, heterogenous endeavor, I used Lexington as a laboratory to investigate urban planning, design methodologies, and civic leadership. Likewise, as a fellow at the Gaines Center for Humanities at UK, a selective, interdisciplinary program in the humanities, I completed a senior thesis that looked at how different community stakeholders perceived a historic public housing project, and how these diverging narratives undermined the support of this project in the community. This research informed an essay that won 2nd Place in the 2007 Berkeley Prize in Architecture and helped me define a platform as an Op-Ed writer for the local newspaper.

I spent the summer after graduating at a joint research program of UK and the Berlage Instituut in Rotterdam. Instead of ingesting a rich diet of only contemporary Dutch architecture, the program asked in to investigate the Randstad region for its heady spatial planning policies, its social architecture, and its connection to an extended national narrative; welcome conceits to my previous interests in Lexington. After staying in Holland for another four months as an intern at Mecanoo Architecten, I moved back to New York City to work for Jeffrey Inaba as one of the first interns at the Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting. My work in the office included the Donor Hall installation at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and several articles in DOMUS, Urban Chine, and Volume Magazine. I tell people that, like Henry Hudson, I set sail from the Oude Delft in Rotterdam, landed in New York City, and found a new world awaiting!

While these experiences have shaped my expansive view of architecture, I have, in the past two years, worked hard to hone my traditional design skills as a junior architect for Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis Architects (LTL) in New York. Under the tutelage of the three fantastic partners, I have learned about the pleasures and challenges of running a progressive and energetic architectural office. But more importantly, I had the chance to work with and befriend the wonderful group of architects that also work in the office. My experience there, from working on a 40,000 sq. ft. California campus to leading a project to design a new playground typology, was incredibly fruitful.

Currently, as a summer interlude before entering Princeton University next month, I am serving as the Project Manager of the American section of Rotterdam Biennale, organized by Interboro Partners of Brooklyn, NY. Working with Kees Christiaanse's thesis about the "Open City," we are investigating how people in the United States are sorting themselves according to very trenchant mechanisms of culture, ideology, and political persuasion. And in some way, the work is leading me right back to Kentucky, and to my continuing role as an advocate for the development of Lexington as an open, optimistic city.

Why you chose your school/program
I could say I chose Princeton's School of Architecture for any number of reasons: its faculty, its reputation, its size, its theory program, etc; but when people ask me why I chose Princeton over any number of other fine options, I tell them that it was the people.

The spring open house gauntlet is a draining process; filled with long bus rides, haggling over scholarships, and endless student panels. Princeton was my last visit, and I had to decide which school to attend only two days after their open house, a decision I had not yet made! It took me only a few hours at the school (albeit in a building that pales in comparison to Yale's sleek new emporium) to realize that the students and faculty were people with whom I could learn, befriend, and collaborate. From the interactive lunch to the all-faculty meeting, I appreciated the faculty's commitment to the school and their promise to be overwhelming present.

Besides this, its also worth mentioning that I was attracted by the school focus on urbanism, a discipline on which I hope to focus as a graduate student. The school just received a large grant to study contemporary infrastructure in the New York metro region through the Center for Architecture, Urbanism, and Infrastructure, a well-timed infusion of capital into an important topic.

Also, I am intending to pursue a Certificate in Urban Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School in order to balance my design education with an empirical and pragmatic investigation of the contemporary city. The curriculum will expand my knowledge of certain themes that characterized my undergraduate education, such as the social construction of the city, affordable housing, race and equality, and public policy.

Other factors that played a role: the small size of the student body (a plus if everyone gets along!), the generous financial aid package, and the opportunity to develop my teaching skills as a TA.

Architecture interests
For the sake of brevity, I don't want to air my architectural laundry too flagrantly, but I will reiterate a few of my interests.

As a humanist, I hope to develop a professional career focused on the city as a social and public creation, to quote Rossi, a "human thing par excellant."

As a designer, I am interested in process (a vestige of Rowe in my undergraduate education); and so I'm hoping that Liz Diller's process driven Thesis Program is a good fit for the denouement of my graduate education.

I couch myself as a social advocate. From literacy to educational reform, I'm hesitant to dissociate my role as a designer with the public realm in which I am working. Sustainability should fit into this proclivity, but I am of the ilk that believes sustainability should be worn by every pursuit (and should not be badge or category in and of itself).

I'm fond of Scott Brown/Venturi's aging dictum to architects: "look before you speak!" Taken one step further, I like architects and geographers who engage the existing environment: think John Stilgoe at Harvard or Geoff Mavanagh's BLDGBLG. In the same vein, I am interested in preservation as a contemporary and progressive exercise (and not a stodgy practice of a cultural elite), for its power to re-order the existing environment.

As an aside, I am also very interested in the future of architectural education. One of the reasons I would like to compile a Archinect blog is to investigate, through a very direct experience, this topic. I have a lot to say about the current state of the academy, and I hope that the Archinect audience might be a helpful audience.

But as an incoming student, I love the simple pleasure of designing and making, sometimes just as in end in itself. Our discipline competes for attention from both sides of our brain, the intuitive and the analytical. And sometimes its just nice to lose oneself in the visceral pleasure of making.

Other interests
Despite what the above text might prefigure, I am not dedicated to even becoming an architect. I threaten my friends and family with the common proclamation (especially in my current food-obsessed home of Brooklyn), "I'm moving to Maine and starting a farm!" While this might or might not come to fruition, I am certainly a shameless foodie, cook, urban farmer (wanabe), and food policy buff. I'm even considering using my interest in food to develop a thesis topic about the role of agriculture in cities, a not-so obscure topic anymore.

I am a dedicated runner (and sometimes marathoner), a passion I hope to use as a stress-reliever at Princeton.

My girlfriend, who works for a journalism/community development non-profit in Miami, FL, is a rising superstar and a frequent interlocutor on subjects as random as, agency in planning methodology, to flour ratios in the perfect pain d'la ancienne.

Traveling, like most architecture students, is a deep love. I've been to 11 countries and over 30 states - and I still can't get enough. I'm hoping to take the China and Japan studios at Princeton if the opportunity arises. What a great world!