The Department of Architecture, College of Architecture, Art and Design at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates is pleased to announce the following faculty appointments commencing Fall 2016.

Jason Carlow has been appointed as an Assistant Professor. His design work, research and teaching are centered on the relationship between digital and traditional modes of drawing, modeling and fabrication. He holds a B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University and a Master of Architecture from Yale University. His design and research work has been published and exhibited internationally in venues including the Hong Kong / Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, the Venice Biennale of Architecture and the Beijing Architecture Biennial as well as in architectural exhibitions in Hong Kong, Xian, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Shanghai, London and Washington DC.

Greg Watson has been appointed as a Professor. Before joining AUS, he was the Emogene Pliner Professor of Architecture at LSU and served as an associate professor at Mississippi State University, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Minnesota. He has also held visiting and adjunct positions at the Savannah College of Art and Design, the Maine College of Art, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Watson’s teaching and research focuses on design process, materials, landscape design and representation. Throughout his academic career he has received numerous awards, most recently the 2015 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Distinguished Professor Award.

As an architect, his work includes award-winning projects while practicing in Chicago, Minneapolis, Maine, South Carolina and Mississippi. His paintings, drawings, and prints have been widely exhibited at galleries in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Annapolis, Mississippi, and Louisiana. These scholarly pursuits in architecture and art have been supported from the Mississippi State University Office of Research, the University of Minnesota College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Watson holds a BA in psychology from Columbia University and a Master of Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis.

Matthew A. Trimble has been appointed as an Assistant Professor. Trimble is a principal and founder of Radlab, an experimental design and fabrication firm. He has a diverse range of experience working and consulting in the field of architecture for firms that include Neil M. Denari Architects, Behnisch Behnisch and Partner, Preston Scott Cohen, Inc, and dECOi Architects. Trimble has taught seminars, workshops, and studios internationally for both graduate and undergraduate students at the Boston Architectural College, the Wentworth Institute of Technology, the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City, and the Rhode Island School of Design. Trimble holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Architecture degree from The University of Memphis, where he received the Frances F. Austin Scholarship, and a Master of Architecture degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the Avalon Travel Fellowship.

Mara Marcu has been appointed as a Visiting Assistant Professor for the Fall of 2016. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati and founder of MM13. Her work focuses on providing for a digital and material workflow that connects design, fabrication, and culture-specific topics. Prior to her academic career, she worked for Rafael Vinoly Architects in NYC, and on the Shobac Cottages, as part of Ghost Lab 7, with Brian MacKay-Lyons in Nova Scotia, Canada. In 2010 Marcu trained with Pritzker Prize Laureate Glenn Murcutt in Australia. Her education includes a Master of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Houston where she received the Best in Show Design Award. In 2011 she was the recipient of the University of Virginia Fellowship. Mara is the founder of ECHOS with the first upcoming volume published with Actar.

Igor Peraza has rejoined the architecture faculty as a Visiting Assistant Professor for the 2016-2017 academic year. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, Peraza holds a BSc of Architecture from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, received a scholarship to do his Master of Architecture at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, and obtained his Ph.D at the University of Kumamoto, Kyushu, Japan. Professionally, he worked for five years at the Atelier of Arata Isozaki and led the Domus (Museum of Mankind) project on-site in La Coruña, Spain. In 2000 he relocated to Barcelona to work with Miralles Tagliabue as Director of the Santa Caterina Market project. Peraza went on to serve as Director of EMBT’s Shanghai office were he led numerous projects including the Spanish Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo, the New Campus of Fudan University in Shanghai, and the Museum for the Chinese painter Zhang Daqian. He has previously taught at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the European Institute of Design, Tongji University, and served as a visiting professor at the Lebanese American University from 2013 to 2015.