Kristine Stiphany is an architect, scholar, and educator who integrates ethnographic research, participatory design, and housing development to examine and reimagine urban landscapes across the United States and Latin America. She founded the urban studio CHAPA to design architecture, public landscapes, and urban environments that are socially just, ecologically resilient, and spatially meaningful across sectors and contexts. Her forthcoming book, Insurgent Urbanisms in the Americas, examines how citizen participation, coupled with spatial transformation, shapes design equity, knowledge co-production, and environmental awareness.
As an educator—currently on the faculty at the State University of New York at Buffalo—Kristine directs the Design for Resilient Environments Lab, where she explores building–landscape interactions. At Texas Tech University, she coordinated a three-year graduate traveling studio on Latin American architecture, urbanism, and housing. Prior to that, she was a National Science Foundation Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin. This summer, CHAPA@10 (C-10) will release a ten-year restudy and participatory toolbox based on that project.
Earlier in her career, Kristine was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of São Paulo’s Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU), contributed to slum upgrading projects for the City of São Paulo, and taught as a visiting professor at Escola da Cidade. She also practiced at Studio Gang, where she worked on high-rise residential, civic, and luxury housing projects.
Kristine’s work has been published, exhibited, and awarded in the United States, Europe, and Brazil—from a 2001 solo exhibition on rental tenements at the Salão Caramelo to a 2024 Texas Society of Architects design award for the Sparks Oasis Community Resilience Hub in El Paso. Her scholarship has appeared in the Journal of Architectural Education, Urban Studies, and the Journal of Planning Education and Research, among others. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan and a Master of Architecture and PhD in Urban Planning from the University of Texas at Austin.
