Felipe Corrêa

Felipe Correa is the Vincent and Eleanor Shea Professor and the chair of Architecture at UVA School of Architecture. He is an internationally renowned architect and urbanist. Working at the confluence of architecture, urbanism, and infrastructure, he has, through his design practice Somatic Collaborative, developed design projects with the public and private sector in multiple cities and regions across the globe. Designing across multiple scales and varied contexts, Correa is known for using architectural commissions, design competitions, and diverse forms of applied research to facilitate design’s role as a critical mediator between society and space. Prior to joining UVA, he was an Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Architecture in Urban Design program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Correa’s forthcoming book, Collective Living and the Architectural Imaginary (with Anthony Averbeck and Devin Dobrowolski) examines through text and drawing more than sixty case studies of multi-unit residential projects. In doing so the book presents a written and visual narrative of the architect’s role in shaping domesticity and urban life in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. His most recent book, São Paulo: A Graphic Biography (University of Texas Press, 2018), presents a comprehensive portrait of Brazil’s largest city, narrating its fast-paced growth and offering a compelling vision of how a city can transform its post-industrial fabric to alleviate the extreme socio-economic divide between city center and periphery. Correa is also the author of Beyond the City: Resource Extraction in South America (University of Texas Press, 2016), Mexico City: Between Geometry and Geography (ARD, 2015), and A Line in the Andes (ARD, 2014).

Correa is coeditor, along with Bruno Carvalho (Harvard) and Allison Isenberg (Princeton), of the Lateral Exchanges edited series with the University of Texas Press. Lateral Exchanges is devoted to architecture and urbanism in the context of globalized and hemispheric connections. Publishing research on historical and contemporary issues in design and the built environment, the series covers several interrelated fields including architecture, environmental humanities, history, landscape architecture, media and visual studies, planning, and urban studies. Additionally, at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Correa co-founded and directed (in collaboration with Ana María Durán) the South America Project (SAP), a trans-continental applied research network that proactively endorses the role of design within rapidly transforming geographies of the South American continent.

Correa’s research and design work has been exhibited world-wide, most recently in the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale and the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial. His work has been presented in Germany (Ways of Life: Rethinking the role of hinterland living), in Lisbon (The World in Our Eyes: Lisbon Architecture Triennale), in Rotterdam (International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam), in Buenos Aires (Bienal Internacional de Buenos Aires) and in Quito (Bienal Panamericana de Arquitectura).

Correa’s design work, research, and writings have been published in journals, including Abitare, Architectural Design, Architectural Record, Harvard Design Magazine, MONU, Ottagono, and PLOT among many others. He has lectured and exhibited worldwide at many universities and conferences, most recently at Columbia University, Cornell University, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Tulane University, University of Pennsylvania, The National Arts Club of New York, and the Pan-American Architecture Biennale.

In addition to previous academic appointment at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Correa has taught at Cornell University’s School of Art, Architecture and Planning and the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, School of Architecture. Through his academic appointments, he has served various leadership and advisory roles in support of curriculum and student affairs, including the Office of the Provost’s Advisory Board for Architecture Research at Universidad de la República (Uruguay), the Dean’s Academic Diversity Committee at Harvard, and the Dean’s Board of Advisers at Tulane University, among others.