Architecture

Patricia Kio

Patricia Kio

School of Architecture/Sustainability and the Built Environment
Assistant Professor
(352) 392-4836
p.kio@ufl.edu

Patricia Kio holds a Ph.D. in Architecture with a specialization in circular economy from Texas A&M University. In recognition of her work, Kio was the recipient of the King Student Medal Award for Excellence in Architectural + Environmental Research at the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University.  She is a member of the Nigerian Institute of Architects. Kio has published several peer-reviewed articles in highly preferred journals such as Journal of Cleaner Production, Energy and Buildings, and Waste and Biomass Valorization. She is a reviewer for the Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management Journal and a few others. In addition, Kio serves on the Editorial Board of TAD (Technology | Architecture + Design) Journal. Kio was an Assistant Professor at Fitchburg State University. Her teaching and research interests include architectural design, building construction systems, sustainable architecture, materials, environmental systems integration, and smart circular economy. She is gratefully raising two daughters with her loving husband. They enjoy reading, watching movies, and playing board games.

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Karla Saldaña Ochoa

Karla Saldaña Ochoa

School of Architecture
Assistant Professor
(352) 294-1453
AH 252
ksaldanaochoa@ufl.edu
https://www.ai-share-lab.com/

Karla is an Ecuadorian architect; with a Master of Advanced Studies in Landscape Architecture from ETH Zurich. In June 2021, she finished her Ph.D. at ETH Zurich, which investigated the integration of Artificial and Human Intelligence to have a precise and agile response to natural disasters. Since August 2021, Karla is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida; her teaching and research focus on investigating the interplay of Artificial and Human Intelligence in architectural practices at building and urban scale. Karla is the leading researcher at SHARE Lab; a research group focused on developing human-centered AI projects focused on design practices.

Please visit SHARE Lab website if you want to know more or if you want to collaborate

www.ai-share-lab.com

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David Rifkind

David Rifkind

Architecture
Professor
rifkind.david@ufl.edu

David Rifkind joined the UF faculty July 1, 2021, as Director of the School of Architecture after 14 years at Florida International University. His term as director ended on June 30, 2024. Trained as an architect and as an architectural historian, Rifkind studies urbanism and architecture in Ethiopia from the late nineteenth century to the present. His current book project, Modern Ethiopia: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Building of a Nation, incorporates field research in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti with archival research in Ethiopia, Europe and the United States. His work in Ethiopia has been supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation and a residency at the American Academy in Rome as the inaugural Wolfsonian-FIU Affiliated Fellow.

Rifkind’s doctoral dissertation, Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy, examined the complex interrelationships of modern architecture and state politics in Fascist Italy. The dissertation won the 2011 James Ackerman Prize for Architectural History from the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza, and was subsequently published as The Battle for Modernism in 2012 by the CISA Palladio and Marsilio Editori.

He has also won best article awards for essays published in the two flagship journals in architectural education and history, the Journal of Architectural Education (“Misprision of Precedent: Design as Creative Misreading”) and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (“Gondar. Architecture and Urbanism for Italy’s Fascist Empire”). He curated the 2012 exhibition, Metropole/Colony: Africa and Italy, in the Wolfsonian-FIU Teaching Gallery at the Frost Art Museum, and in 2016 developed an exhibition with Professor Dawit Benti (EiABC), Contemporary Architecture in Ethiopia, which opened in Addis Ababa, Miami, and in the gallery of Jonathan and Melanie Antevy Hall at UF. In 2014, Ashgate published A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture, which he co-edited with Elie G. Haddad.

A practicing designer, Rifkind has worked to make environmental stewardship and community development the central focus of architectural practice in South Florida. In 2012 he completed a house in South Miami which served as a model of sustainable construction and environmental stewardship. He is currently working on two net-zero energy projects.

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Judi Shade Monk

Judi Shade Monk

School of Architecture
Instructional Assistant Professor
352-294-1461
AH 234
j.shade.monk@ufl.edu

Areas of Focus:
Sustainability (Building Energy, Building Materials, Built Environment Resilience, Smart Buildings/Cities, Sustainable Architecture and Design, Sustainable Construction)
I have been a LEED accredited professional since 2006. The continuing education I seek in order to maintain my credentials includes sustainability and resilience. I work to maintain a broad understanding of the implementation and evolution of resilient technologies and practices so that it can be incorporated into my teaching at all levels.

Bio:
JUDI SHADE MONK is registered architect in Florida, New Jersey, and New York. She is NCARB certified and has been a LEED accredited professional since 2006. Prior to rejoining the School of Architecture faculty as a Lecturer in 2019, she played key design roles in internationally renowned, award-winning offices in New York City and Washington DC, including five years at Richard Meier & Partners Architects. She has taught design studios at Tulane University and Yale University.

She has worked in multiple capacities on numerous building typologies including single-family and high-rise residential, boutique hospitality, educational, retail, agricultural, and government projects. She has lead competition teams to award, worked as a project manager and design assist for a general contractor, and run her own small practice. Her volunteer work includes four years of service on the municipal planning board in Highland Park, NJ, where she lived prior to moving back to Gainesville.

Professor Monk teaches design studios, the #OneDCP class – Creating the Built Environment, and is a member of the graduate faculty. Her research interests include practice-informed studio instruction and pedagogy, color theory in the Josef Albers tradition, detailing, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and the education of non-architects on the role and value of the profession. She is dedicated to equality, equity, and diversity and is committed to the lifetime of learning, unlearning, listening, and advocacy that those goals demand.

Professor Monk has been quoted in the New York Times, The Real Deal NYC, and Gainesville Magazine and interviewed by Bloomberg News; her writing has been published in the Journal of Architectural Education where her advocacy has also been noted, along with many other cultural and industry-related outlets.

She is a proud University of Florida Alumna and a Legacy Gator; her parents met at UF in a symbolic logic class in 1970! She earned her Bachelor of Design in 1999 and Master of Architecture in 2001. Upon graduation, she was awarded the Alpha Rho Chi medal and enjoyed teaching lower division studios for two years prior to moving to NYC. She grew up in Jupiter, FL and has also lived in Hoboken, NJ, Washington DC and New Orleans. Her husband, Don Monk, is on faculty at UF at the Fisher School of Accounting; they have two daughters that keep them on their toes!

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Michael Montoya

Michael Montoya

School of Architecture
Instructional Assistant Professor
352-392-6920
AH 248
michael2086@ufl.edu

Michael Montoya is a lecturer at the University of Florida School of Architecture where he primarily teaches design as well as lecture courses. He also taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor at UF in 2000 and returned in 2015 – 2018 as an Adjunct Assistant Professor, teaching in the Undergraduate and graduate programs. During his tenure since beginning as a lecturer in August 2019 he has taught design in all four levels of the undergraduate program as well as Architecture History 1 and Materials and Methods 2.

He has initiated the beginnings of research in the areas of pedagogy, suburban popular culture, picturesque and the highway. His professional work spans a career of over 30 years in the profession working for various firms in Florida. Some projects he served as lead designer for are the Winston YMCA in Jacksonville, Florida, The Industry West Showroom in Jacksonville, Florida and The Florida Blue Stores throughout the state. Michael Montoya received his Bachelor of Design from The University of Florida and his Master of architecture from The University of Florida awarded with the Alpha Rho Chi Medal.

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Steven Grant

Steven Grant

School of Architecture, CityLab-Orlando
Professor of Practice + Program Director Themed Environments Integration (TEI)
407-610-8325
steven.grant@ufl.edu

Steven Grant, AIA is the Program Director of the Master of Science in Architectural Studies Concentration in Themed Environments Integration, and a Professor of Practice, at the University of Florida’s, CityLab-Orlando. He received a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design degree, and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Ball State University, and a Master of Liberal Studies degree from Rollins College.

Professor Grant has been a registered architect for 36 years, practicing in Chicago and New York before moving to Los Angeles in 1991 to be an Architect and Design Manager at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he spent 28 years design managing theme park projects at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Professor Grant has merged his extensive knowledge and experience obtained from working with teams in the design and construction of over one-hundred themed environments at Walt Disney World, with his liberal arts studies, to direct the Themed Environments Integration MSAS graduate program at UF’s Orlando CityLab.

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Hassan Azad

Hassan Azad

School of Architecture
Assistant Professor
352-294-1452
AH 230
h.azad@ufl.edu
https://eaarlab.com/

Education:
PhD in Design, Construction, and Planning | University of Florida
MSc in Low Energy Architecture | University of Tehran
BSc in Architectural Engineering | Iran University of Science and Technology

Areas of Focus:

Hassan Azad, an assistant professor at the University of Florida’ School of Architecture, is a scholar known for his research, teaching, and practice in the areas of architectural science, building technology, and particularly architectural and environmental acoustics. Dr. Azad is the director at EAAR Lab where with his team they conduct research projects that encompass a variety of topics including Technology Integration with Architectural Design, Computer Programming and Simulation for Architectural and Acoustical Applications, and Smart and Connected Built Environment.

Smart & Connected Communities – He is also interested in smart technologies in building and urban scales that elevate acoustic comfort. In addition, he studies the environmental effect of unwanted sound on public health.

Sustainability – Using sustainable acoustic materials for sound insulation and absorption.

Bio:
Hassan Azad is a LEED AP BD + C and an AIA Associate. He is also a member of Noise Control Engineering (INCE-USA), International Building Performance Simulation Association, USA Chapter (IBPSA-USA), Society of Building Science Educators (SBSE), Building Technology Educators Society (BTES), Acoustical Society of America (ASA), and Audio Engineering Society (AES). He serves as a member for the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Technical Committee (TC) on Architectural Acoustics, and Technical Specialty Group (TSG) on Computational Acoustics. Dr. Azad has received many awards, scholarships and grants and is a recipient of Robert Bradford Newman Medal for Excellence in Architectural Acoustics.

At the School of Architecture, Professor Azad teaches several undergraduate and graduate courses. He is also a University of Florida’s Doctoral Research Faculty and supervises doctoral and master’s degree seeking students. He teaches Environmental Technology I & II and graduate seminars on topics of Architectural and Environmental Acoustics.

Hassan Azad holds a B.Sc. in Architectural Engineering from the Iran University of Science and Technology and a M.Sc. in Low Energy Architecture from the University of Tehran. He graduated with a Ph.D. in design, construction, and planning from the School of Architecture of the University of Florida in 2018. Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Azad worked as an acoustical consultant in the San Francisco bay area for a year.

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Sarah Gamble

Sarah Gamble

School of Architecture
Assistant Professor
352-294-1457
AH 250
sarah.gamble@ufl.edu

M Arch, University of Texas at Austin
B Des, University of Florida

Areas of Focus:
Sustainability (Built Environment Resilience, Sustainable Architecture and Design)

Research:
My work focuses on the sustainability and resilience of communities at multiple scales. Taking shape as individual building design to neighborhood / urban design, past project experience includes affordable housing, disaster relief, historic preservation, public art, educational spaces, and active transportation. This focus aligns with the development of new course work and program offerings in Public Interest Design / Community Design. A current research/writing project with Coleman Coker at UT Austin focuses on designers understanding of environmental issues and its impact on practice / design for communities.

Bio:
Sarah Gamble is a registered architect and educator with a passion for the public realm and community projects. Gamble teaches architectural design for graduate and undergraduate students at the UF School of Architecture, following teaching at the University of Texas at Austin from 2011 to 2018. Gamble’s academic research focuses on context and how design is catalyzed by the surrounding environment and our understanding of it, including physical, cultural, social, and ephemeral facets. This focus feeds her architectural practice, residing in public interest design, a field incorporating elements of urban planning, architectural design, the arts, social work, community engagement, and education.

A native of Florida’s Gulf Coast,​ Gamble’s practice has focused on the southeastern United States within the public and non-profit sectors, including creative placemaking, historic preservation, community engagement, affordable housing, disaster recovery, and institutional design. In 2018, Gamble served as the State Architect for the Texas Historical Commission’s Main Street Program and its 80+ member communities providing design and revitalization consulting services, in addition to developing resources for the public. From 2011 – 2017, Gamble co-founded and co-led GO collaborative (Gamble Osgood Collaborative), a design and planning firm connecting people with place with clients and grantors including the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), City of Calgary, and ArtPlace America. GO collaborative led the creation of Exploring Our Town, following an 18-month research and design process. This interactive, online resource serves policymakers and the public  at many steps along the creative placemaking path and presents information for communities planning or implementing their own projects by providing succinct case studies, topic overviews, and applicable lessons learned from both individual projects and from overall project efforts. The resource features 70+ completed or on-going projects from across the country that received funding through the NEA’s Mayors’ Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative (MICD25) and the annual Our Town grant program.​ From 2009 – 2011​, Gamble served as Architect of the Austin Community Design and Development Center, a non-profit community design center focused on affordable housing. She focused on the design of homeless transitional housing and led an infill affordable housing program, the Alley Flat Initiative. From 2007 – 2009, Gamble was a designer at Specht Architects (formerly Specht Harpman Architects) in Austin working on projects at St. Edward’s University. Gamble’s focus was the award winning Doyle Hall, a renovation and addition to a 1950’s mid-century dormitory to the home of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. The project received a AIA Austin Design Award and was featured in Metropolis and Architect Magazines. From 2006 – 2007, Gamble co-founded and served as Coordinator of the CITYbuild Consortium of Schools, based at the Tulane University School of Architecture. The organization served 17+ national universities to assist in New Orleans’ rebuilding following Hurricane Katrina. In 2008, Gamble received a ACSA Collaborative Practice award for this work.

As a professional and volunteer, Sarah has been recognized for her advocacy and design work within Austin and beyond. In 2015, Gamble received the Young Alumni Award from the University of Florida School of Architecture and was featured by Austin(its) Magazine as one of 21 Austinites making a difference. In 2013, she was featured in Texas Architect magazine as one of “4 Under 40” architects and named one of Austin’s “10 to Watch” in 2011 by Tribeza Magazine for her positive impact on the city

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Jeffrey Carney

Jeffrey Carney

School of Architecture, Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER)
Associate Professor + Director FIBER
352-294-3373
AH 246
j.carney@ufl.edu

BA, Washington University in St. Louis
M.Arch and MCP, University of California, Berkeley

Areas of Focus: Sustainability  Bio: Jeff Carney is a registered architect and certified city planner working at the interface of housing, neighborhoods, and ecosystems with a focus on climate change adaptation. He is associate professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida, director of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER), and director of the Florida Resilient Cities program (FRC). Jeff’s work in Florida is focused on the resilience of communities achieved through transdisciplinary and community engaged design processes. His current projects include a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funded effort to design post-disaster modular housing, and an FRC project to assist the panhandle City of Port St. Joe to recover from Hurricane Michael that is supported by the Jessie Ball Dupont fund. Previously, Jeff was the director of the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio (CSS) where he led the development of the Louisiana Resiliency Assistance Program (LRAP) that continues to assist communities throughout Louisiana; additionally, he led the design and fabrication of the 10,000sf permanent exhibition for the LSU Center for River Studies called “shifting Foundations” which told the story of coastal Louisiana’s changing landscape and the new paradigms in protection and restoration needed to create a more sustainable coast. He co-directed his team’s award-winning submission for the Changing Course competition entitled “The Giving Delta,” that reimagined Louisiana’s ecological systems and coastal communities in the context of climate change. Shortly before moving to UF Jeff initiated and led the project “Inland from the Coast,” a three-year grant supported by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Jeff’s work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and his projects and scholarship have been published widely. His projects have been recognized through awards including the 2018 AIABR Rose Award winner for the Shifting Foundations exhibit; the 2016 New York Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award, for “The Giving Delta”; the 2014 APA Planning Excellence Award for Education, for the Louisiana Resilience Assistance Program; the 2012 ACSA Collaborative Practice Award, for the Coastal Sustainability Studio; and the 2011 EDRA Great Places Awards in Design Research for “Measured Change: Tracking Transformations on Bayou Lafourche.” Jeff teaches undergraduate and graduate level architecture studios and multi-disciplinary seminars on resilience design and planning at the building, neighborhood, and regional scale. Jeff received his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis and master’s degrees in both architecture and city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Jeff was awarded the Branner Fellowship to conduct a year-long research project to study the evolution of modernist neighborhood-scale urbanism in Europe, South America, and Asia, an experience which continues to shape his work today.

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Ryan Sharston

Ryan Sharston

School of Architecture, Rinker School of Construction Management, Florida Institute for the Built Environment Resilience (FIBER)
Assistant Professor
352-294-3375
AH 246
r.sharston@ufl.edu

University of Michigan
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Areas of Focus:
Sustainability (Building Energy, Building Materials, Built Environment Resilience, Renewable Energy, Smart Buildings/Cities, Sustainable Architecture and Design, Sustainable Construction, Sustainable Technology)
I am interested in improving the energy as well as the occupant- related health performance of the built environment through advancements in building envelopes

Bio:
Dr. Ryan Sharston is an architect and a civil and environmental engineer. For nearly two decades, he has taught, researched and practiced sustainable design and construction and environmental technologies in various academic and industrial settings.

His research focuses on computational building modeling, building performance evaluation, indoor environmental quality and occupants’ health and well-being. He has taught architectural design studios and building and environmental technologies at the University of Michigan and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

In his professional practice, he has served as lead engineer and construction manager for numerous projects, with a particular focus on technologically advanced and integrated designs and constructions.

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