Faculty Directory

Since 1988, Ray has been a member of the graduate faculty at SCI-Arc. She has also been the chair, Environmental Arts, at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles (1997 - 1999). In addition, she has held visiting professorships at various universities, including the University of Michigan, Rice University, and Yale University. In 1985 she joined Robert Mangurian as a principal at Studio Works in Los Angeles. Their projects have ranged from speculative activities of a purely conceptual nature to large building commissions. The work occurs at a variety of scales, ranging from clothing-like personal shelters to interventions of furniture into rooms and streets, reconfigurations of urban houses and storefronts, and rehabilitations of large utilitarian buildings in mega-cities. Its cultural range extends from high and conceptual art to pop and the everyday, and it is situated both locally and globally. Their conceptual studies have extended to the American 'vernacular,' everyday forms of architecture in Los Angeles, such as service stations, single-family houses, commercial storefronts, and streets. These have led to provocative, visionary proposals. Rather than the typical grand gestures of large scale planning efforts, they favor small interventions that foreground existing structures and relationships, enhancing and celebrating the juxtapositions and discontinuities of existing urban fabrics. They have received four Progressive Architecture citations for architecture and a Progressive Architecture award for urban design. Twice named Taubman College's Eliel Saarinen visiting professors, Ray and Mangurian received a prestigious Chrysler Design Institute's Award. Additionally, Ray held the Rome Prize Fellowship in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome in 1987 - 88. In 2005 Ray and Mangurian established B.A.S.E., the Bejiing Architecture Studio Enterprise where for the last two years Michigan architecture students and faculty member Robert Adams have conducted a Spring semester traveling studio.