Kris Menos
Faculty, School of Architecture
Kris is a Co-Founder of Human Being Design, a transdisciplinary practice at the intersection between individual and environ. Their current projects include a multi-generational rammed-earth house in Santa Fe, a wood cabin in rural Vermont, a parametric system for postgenomic stelae, and a series of multi-human urns for private clients.
As a member of the Academy’s School of Architecture faculty, Kris has taught first-year design studios (both first and second semester) and 2D and 3D design communication courses in the BArch program, as well as a Pre-College summer program.
Kris received a post-professional Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS) degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Architecture under a Graduate Fellowship, with a concentration in Architectural Design. His graduate thesis, entitled Post-Mordial: Esoteric Embodiment, embraced the emergent technological paradigm of personal genetic sequencing and leveraged parametric design and digital fabrication techniques, to produce unique proto-architectural design artifacts that blur the boundary between human and environ. While at MIT, Kris also received the Kaufman Teaching Certificate from the Teaching and Learning Laboratory. Kris previously attended Syracuse University under the School of Architecture Scholarship, and attained a professional Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) degree with dual majors in Architecture and the History of Architecture, and a focus on mid-century visionary, utopian, and paper architecture. Upon graduation, he was a recipient of the James Britton Memorial Award for Outstanding Thesis, for Isotopia: Architectural Visions from a Posthuman Future. This project was shown in the 2013 AIANY Architecture School Exhibition at the Center for Architecture.
Building on this academic work, Kris’s research is focused on novel means of anthropomorphic form-making, fabrication, and materiality, using fundamentally human tools, methods, and sources to explore, subvert, or dissolve the Enlightenment-era bifurcation between human and environment.
Beginning in 2004, Kris has had professional experience in the fields of urbanism, design, architecture, and construction, including with the nonprofit urban think tank Terreform ONE, the full-scope boutique architectural, interior, and landscape design firm Woolley Morris Architects, and the concrete contractor Pacific Structures. He’s been involved in a diverse range of projects, across a wide range design disciplines and scales, from less than one square inch to more than one million square feet, and participated in all phases of the architectural design process — from pre-concept through construction administration and closeout — on tens of millions of dollars of projects.
Courses Taught
