The Watson Chair in Architecture invites distinguished scholars, researchers and practitioners to campus for lectures, seminars and workshops that engage the Carnegie Mellon Architecture community in critical discourse on the built environment.
The Watson Chair in Architecture plays an important role in the intellectual life of the school. They bring global perspectives, interdisciplinarity, and diversity of experience in architectural design and its related disciplines. They engage faculty and students through lectures, workshops, readings and dialogue and contribute to our annual public programs. The chairs also provide unique insight into our three pedagogical challenges: climate change, artificial intelligence and social justice, helping us critically address them.
The Watson Chair in Architecture is sponsored by the Jill Watson Endowment at the Intersection of the Arts.
Types of Engagements
- Academic semester engagement (1-week, themed series of lectures/workshops/dialogues)
- Academic year engagement (periodic visit over the two semesters, design studio/design research)
Previous Recipients
2025-26: Arturo Escobar
Arturo Escobar is a Colombian American anthropologist, known for his work in post-development theory, political ecology, and ontological design, who co-founded the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. Born in Manizales, Colombia, he holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. He previously taught at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. For the past three decades, Escobar has been working closely with Colombia Afro-descendant, environmental and feminist organizations. His influential books include "Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World" (2011); "Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds" (2018); "Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible" (2020); and "Relationality: An Emergent Politics of Life Beyond the Human," with M. Osterweil and K. Sharma (2024).
2024-25: Emmanuel Pratt
Emmanuel Pratt is an American urban designer. In 2009, he co-founded the Sweet Water Foundation, which practices "Regenerative Neighborhood Development" on the South Side of Chicago. The foundation brings intergenerational members of the community together for education and to work on urban agriculture and reclaiming abandoned properties and transforming them into productive landscapes. In 2019, Pratt was invited to participate in the third Chicago Architecture Biennial, where his entry "Reroot + Redux" explored the connections between architecture and the Great Migration. Pratt was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2019.
Pratt was born in Virginia and graduated in 1995 from Maggie L. Walker Governor's School in Richmond, Va. In 1999, he graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. He received a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University in 2003. From 2016 to 2017, Pratt was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. From 2011 to 2018, Pratt was director of the aquaponics program at Chicago State University. He was the Charles Moore Visiting Professor at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan and is a visiting lecturer in Environmental and Urban Studies at the University of Chicago.