Jacob Swanson is an architectural designer passionate about co-creating sustainable futures. He sees his work as an integrated critical practice across mediums interrogating what it means to live today and how we might live tomorrow. He has a Bachelor of Architecture from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
When I was first applying to architecture school, I began my personal statement by writing that “southern California is known for its temperate climate, beautiful beaches, and deadly wildfires.” Wildfires were at the top of my mind that year—the town I grew up in having just experienced what was then the largest wildfire in state history, one that caused multiple family members to evacuate their homes in the middle of the night and seek refuge at my parents’ for a few days and an event indubitably made more intense by a warming climate. The episode made three things clear to me: the climate crisis is now, we need to take it seriously, and our built environment is not ready for it. It also demonstrated the importance of social support networks (and spaces to facilitate them) in climate adaptation. As devastating environmental disasters have continued to pile up in the interceding years, these imperatives have only become more urgent.
Throughout and beyond my academic career, I have pursued (architectural) investigations into the potential of space as well as built expertise in the social and technical aspects of sustainability. I have also spent a significant amount of time probing conceptions of community with my research on cohousing and involvement in the student publications Transect and iteration.
Jacob Swanson 