a licensed architect, urban planner, ecologist, and researcher, I study how human habitats--buildings, cities, and regions--can be built more in harmony with the nature around us and within us.
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connect with me here on linked in.
DESIGN
As a child, I spent long hours after school sketching architectural and urban fantasies; as I got older, they became full-fledged buildings and proposed transit systems. Now, I'm hoping to use my passion for design to change the way our cities relate to the natural world through a new framework I call Ecoempathy.
In my thesis (available on the Research Writing page) inspired by my summer work with urban codes at DPZ, I explored models for user-modifiable housing based on sets of rules, and asked if architectural ideas could be deployed at a larger scale by being based on codes and patterns. I’m continuing to investigate ideas like Christopher Alexander’s “pattern language” that defines human interactions with space. I am interested in pushing Alexander’s work further to discover a new, twenty-first century set of rules and patterns that can be integrated into buildings and cities to further define and mediate the human relationship to nature. While much modernist architecture, to its detriment, assumes a top-down formal order, by looking at cities as complex human ecosystems with natural laws and patterns, we can begin to determine the most effective architectural and ecological interventions.
ENVIRONMENTALISM
Though always rooted in my home city of San Francisco, I gained a love and appreciation for nature at a young age, as I traveled around California's beautiful parks with my Biologist parents, who imparted to me a Russian love for "priroda" (nature). I believe solving the world's pressing environmental crises must involve an experience of awe and wonder with nature. During High School, I worked with the Student Conservation Association, the Earthwatch Institute, the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, and Naturebridge to make a difference in the San Francisco Bay Area.
At Princeton, I served as co-President of Greening Princeton, a key member of the Greening Dining Committee, and an active member of the GreenLeaders group and advisor to the Office of Sustainability. Read more here about the new recycling system we implemented at Princeton. As an aspiring urban designer, I hope to work toward the integration of cities with nature--see my Ecoempathy page
LANGUAGES + TRANSLATION
I love learning and studying languages, and I find translation to be a tough but rewarding challenge. Through my work with the late CK Williams and contemporary poet Dmitry Kuzmin, I've translated quite a few 20th century and contemporary Russian poets. Updates are coming out frequently, so check out my Translations page for my latest work. My translations have been published in the St. Petersburg Review, the Big Bridge Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry, the Atlanta Review, Spolia, and Talisman Magazine. I also won honorable mention in the 2014 Compass Award Tarkovsky translation contest.
I've also recorded poetry for film soundtracks and am available for hire to recite poetry in Russian and English.
Many of my undergraduate courses focused on linguistics and translation theory, culminating in several articles on the translation of address terms, which can be found on my Research Writing page.