Three new fellows are joining Taubman College for the 2022 – 2023 academic year. The college is excited to welcome the new perspectives and energy Stratton Coffman, Alina Nazmeeva, and Salam Rida bring to Taubman as they join our current team of talented fellows.
Stratton Coffman, Architecture Fellow
Stratton Coffman uses the multi-facing tools of architecture to explore how capital, institutions, and design discourses conspire to produce material, social, and epistemic bodies. They are co-instigator of the architecture research and design working group Proof of Concept with Isadora Dannin. They hold a BA from Wesleyan University and M.Arch from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they received the Imre Halasz Thesis Prize and the AIA Henry Adams Medal. Their work has appeared in Log, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Multimedia Anthropology Lab at University College London. They were previously an editor of Thresholds 48: Kin and a fellow at the MIT Transmedia Storytelling Initiative and are currently a 2022 artist-in-residence at the Goethe Institut.
Alina Nazmeeva, Architecture Fellow
Alina is a graduate of Master of Science in Urbanism, MIT (2019); a fellow of the New Normal program at Strelka Institute of Media Architecture and Design (2017), and a Canadian Centre of Architecture fellow (2022). She was a lead researcher at MIT Future Urban Collectives Lab, working on design for physical and digital spaces for emerging collectives, and a researcher at MIT Real Estate Innovation Lab, studying the economies of virtual worlds and prototyping urban-scale digital twins. She taught at Rhode Island School of Design and Boston Architecture College. She was an invited speaker and a critic at MIT SA+P, Harvard GSD, UBC and Politecnico Di Milano. Her most recent work was exhibited at the 2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2022 Art on the Marquee in Boston and at 2022 Augment Seattle. Her writing has been published in PLAT, Media-N, CARTHA Magazine, Perspectives, VOICES(Towards other Institutions), Harvard Real Estate Review (forthcoming).
In her work Alina examines entanglements and overlays between physical and digital spaces and objects, and their cultural, economic and political implications. Using gaming engines, CGI software, machinima, found footage and installations, she exposes and examines the increasing oscillation between cities and videogames, images and spaces, life and animation. A research-based and narrative-driven approach is fundamental to her work as she often combines visual art projects with writing. With a background in architecture and urbanism, she refuses binaries of physical/digital, or virtual/real, and instead investigates the continuities, gray zones and points of friction between these notions. Alina has love-hate relationships with the internet and digital spaces. This emotional ambiguity inspires her to continue to examine the wonders and horrors of the digital, and how it reassembles the ecological, urban and social systems and spaces.
Salam Rida, Michigan-Mellon Design Fellow
As the Michigan-Mellon design fellow, Rida is responsible for the development of the ArcPrep curriculum; administration of the Michigan Research Studio and digital dissemination platforms; coordination of graduate teaching assistants and invited faculty; and among other outreach activities.
Rida’s research and practice, situated at the intersection of the architecture and urban design, explores multidisciplinary approaches to tactical interventionism, environment sustainability, and equitable economic development. As an urban designer for the city of Jackson Department of Planning and Development under the administration of Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumuba, she worked to launch the Fertile Ground Project, for which she served as program director and arts curator since 2018. In parallel, Rida is co-founder of the Ecoshed, a mixed used incubator for sustainable infrastructure, culinary arts, and cultural production. Most recently, she held a position with Wier Boerner Allin as project manager. A native of Detroit, Rida holds a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and a bachelor’s degree in sociology and urban studies from the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and Arts.