People Making Places and Things
NOUNS is led by Emmett Zeifman, a registered architect in California and New York, and assistant professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds an M.Phil in Architecture from the University of Cambridge, an M.Arch from the Yale School of Architecture, and a B.A. in English Literature from McGill University. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley, he taught at the Harvard GSD, Columbia GSAPP, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, SCI-Arc and the CCA.
He is author of numerous essays on contemporary architecture, and recently curated the exhibition “Towards a Newer Brutalism” at the Harvard GSD (2024), and guest edited Log 64: Toward a Newer Brutalism, or, The Undecorated Shed (2025).
Prior to founding NOUNS, he was a founding editor of Project: A Journal for Architecture and a founding principal of Medium Office, with Alfie Koetter. He also worked on a number of mixed-use and super-tall projects in Asia and the United States with Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. His work has been widely exhibited and published, and has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
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