Joshua Jordan

Josh Jordan has been Director of the fabrication spaces and services for Columbia GSAPP since 2016. In this time he has overseen the renovation, rethinking, and operation of the newly-minted Making Studio, the organizational name for the physical and digital fabrication workspaces for GSAPP students.

As an instructor, he offers a set of courses oriented around critically-informed fabrication, and around making as an act of design thought. These courses are grounded in the shop but aspire to broad ideals of architectural making: including Transitional Geometries (tiling and modular technologies) and Material Things (material objects and artifacts). As the Director of fabrication, Jordan manages and maintains equipment and protocols students use to develop and substantiate their academic design work. This includes long-term care for tools, construction of shop infrastructure and safety systems, and technical research into new or experimental tools. In addition, he supervises a semesterly student crew of over forty, who are trained in making techniques and shop stewardship.

Jordan has a Masters of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania degree from his hometown of Philadelphia and a background in commercial fabrication, general contracting, and restoration. He has worked in architecture offices in both Vancouver BC and Philadelphia, including Marianne Amodio Architecture Studio (now MA+HG), DIGSAU, and Interface Studio Architects. He led the design and fabrication of the Never Built city on the Panorama of the City of New York for the exhibition Never Built New York at the Queens Museum in 2017 and contributed to the fabrication of (Not) Another Tower project by Tatiana Bilbao Estudio at the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.