M.Arch Alumni
Fireside Chats

Natalie is a Job Captain in the healthcare studio at HKS in Washington, DC. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Tulane University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan’s Taubman College, where she graduated with High Distinction and a concentration in Design + Health. Her experience spans new construction, adaptive reuse, and community engagement across healthcare, senior housing, and hospitality. Her research as a Dow Sustainability Fellow focused on advancing health equity at the scale of the home, with a strong belief in the transformative power of design to enhance well-being. Natalie has received accolades including first place in the Saarinen Swanson Essay Competition and the Sensibilities for Representation / New Mediums Thesis Award. When away from the workplace, she’s finding balance in the yoga studio or venturing to new corners of the globe.

J. Collin Garnett currently serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Design at Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture. His work operates at the periphery of architectural practice, focusing on the scalar dipoles of organizational networks and material cultures. This work has expressed itself through mapping and making, particularly concerned with assembling kits, manuals, and archives of knowledge that service community-focused infrastructure.

This work finds operable models in arctic regions of the circumpolar north, where communities retain high levels of agency in planning for post-extraction landscapes. Most recently, Collin participated in a collaborative design seminar focused on emergency planning infrastructure for communities in Western Greenland; his work has also taken him to the arctic archipelago of Svalbard to visit communities facing challenges related to resource extraction, water management, housing policy, globalized logistics chains, melting permafrost and geopolitical sovereignty. These projects contribute to a larger ongoing effort aimed at generating an atlas of agency-networks in the high arctic, which has been featured in faculty showcases and independent publications.

Garnett previously served as a Lecturer at University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he taught undergraduate core studios and design foundations courses while working as a project designer at PLY+, an architecture firm focused on community-driven projects in the Detroit-metro area. He has past experience as a designer for large-scale healthcare projects, adaptive reuse projects, and mass timber buildings as well as serving as an exhibition designer, a journal editor, and co-principal investigator for past and ongoing academic research activity.

Andrea Marquez is a designer and social justice advocate dedicated to co-creating healthy, thriving communities. She is an associate project architect at Albert Kahn Associates and has worked for the A/E firm for nearly 4 years. Before Kahn, she was the project coordinator and designer for a local non-profit developer, Communities First, Inc., doing affordable housing projects and community programs. Prior to grad school, she worked for a residential and hospitality design firm, HRA, in Miami, FL.

As an active member of AIA Detroit, Andrea served on the Board as an Associate Director in 2022 and reactivated the Emerging Professionals Committee as chair in 2024. She received the MillerKnoll Healthcare Scholarship award and the AIA Detroit Associate Award. Outside of work, you will likely find her enjoying an espresso, growing her plant collection, volunteering, or discovering new bookstores.