Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, University of California Berkeley
Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo
Nicholas de Monchaux is an architect, urban designer, and theorist. As well as directing his Oakland-based design practice, he is Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley, where he serves on the executive committee of the Berkeley Center for New Media. He is the author of Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (MIT Press, 2011), an architectural history of the Apollo spacesuit, as well as related themes of midcentury media, fashion, technology, and nature.
de Monchaux received his B.A. with distinction in Architecture, from Yale, and his Professional Degree (M.Arch.) from Princeton University. Before his academic career, he worked as a designer for Michael Hopkins & Partners in London, and Diller, Scofidio + Renfro in New York.
de Monchaux’s work has been published and reviewed in Log, Architectural Design, the New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and have been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Macdowell Colony, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Smithsonian Institution. His design work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the 2010 Biennial of the Americas, the San Jose Zero1 Biennial, and SFMOMA,, and will be one of eight featured interventions at the US Pavillion of the 13th Venice Architecture Bienalle. He has received design awards and citations from the International Union of Architects, Pamphlet Architecture, and the Van Alen Institute, who awarded him the 2000 John Dinkeloo Memorial Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome.