Kristine Stiphany is a registered architect and Director of the Design for Resilient Environments Lab. She specializes in the urban design of housing, with a specific focus on informal housing production and types; the property dynamics, morphological shifts, and financial patterns of rental markets; and urban redevelopment inequalities. Her current projects with the Design for Resilient Environments Lab examine the impact of rental markets on the form and experience of cities, the deteriorating conditions of single-family homes converted to rental housing in Rust Belt cities, the uneven resilience of colonias along the U.S. Mexico border, and the role of public policy in reshaping post-redevelopment economies and urban landscapes in Latin America.

Kristine’s work informs policy and the design of architecture, public landscapes, and urban environments. She has consulted on projects across the public and private sectors, including work with the São Paulo Secretariat of Housing, large-scale mixed-use developments, and community nonprofits.

Before joining SUNY, Kristine was a tenure-track faculty member at Texas Tech University and a National Science Foundation Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences postdoctoral fellow at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that, she was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of São Paulo’s Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo and worked at Studio Gang.

Her recent design studios include ‘Reimagining Casco Bay: Designing for Climate Resilience in Coastal Cities,’ a studio sponsored by the Remain Nantucket Foundation, ‘After Shrimp: Transitioning Ecuador’s Coastal Landscapes,’ and ‘Housing Hybrids: Reimagining Landscape on São Paulo’s Peri-Urban Margins.’ Her scholarship includes peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of Architectural Education, Urban Studies, and Journal of Planning Education and Research, among others. Her creative practice has received multiple design awards, most recently from the Texas Society of Architects for the Sparks Oasis Community Resilience Hub in El Paso. 

PhD – The University of Texas at Austin
MArch – The University of Texas at Austin
BFA – University of Michigan

Registered Architect in Texas and New York
Member, American Institute of Architects (AIA)

Stiphany, K. and E. Ely-Ledesma (In Press) Insurgent Urbanisms in the Americas. New York: Routledge.

Stiphany, K. (In press)Other Schools: Educational Infrastructure on São Paulo’s Peripheries. In Stiphany, K. and E. Ely-Ledesma (eds.) Insurgent Urbanisms in the Americas. New York: Routledge.

Stiphany, K (2024) Beyond Upgrading: Rental Densification as a Pattern for Urban Greening.  In The Routledge Handbook on Greening High-Density Cities: Climate, Society and Health. Peng Du, Dr. Kheir Al-Kodmany, & Dr. Mir M. Ali. New York: Routledge.

Stiphany, K. (2023) Vivienda de alquiler informal en São Paulo: una realidad ignorada Download pdf. (Informal rental housing in São Paulo: An ignored reality). In Vivienda en Arriendo en América Latina. Felipe Link, Adriana Toró (eds.) Centro de Estudos de Conflicto y Cohesión Social – COES; Instituto de Estudios Urbanos e Territorial UC – IEUT UC. PDF Download pdf

Stiphany, K., P.M. Ward, and L.P. Perez (2022) Informal Settlement Upgrading and the Rise of Rental in São Paulo, Brazil. Journal of Planning Education and Research. doi/10.1177/0739456X211065495.

Stiphany, K. (2021) Infrastructural Insurgency: Constructing Situated Data at Brazil’s Urban Periphery. Special Issue: plaNext Next Generation Planning Journal. Planning Theories from the Global South. Vanessa Watson, Chandrima Mukhopadhyay, and Feras Hammami (eds.) 10.24306/plnxt/75

Stiphany, K. (2020) Review of Arantes. P. The Rent of Form: Architecture and Labor in the Digital Age. Journal of Planning Education and Research.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0739456X20905662

Stiphany, K. (2019) Latin American Urbanism After a Right to the City. Latin American Research Review, 53(4): 1072 – 1081.https://larrlasa.org/articles/10.25222/larr.1019/

Stiphany, K. (2019) Mutirão: The Architecture of Agency. Journal of Architectural Education, 73(2): 258 – 260. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10464883.2019.1633207

Stiphany, K. and Ward, P. M. (2019) Autogestão in an Era of Mass Housing: Brazil’s Minha Casa Minha Vida Entidades (MCMV-E) Program. International Journal of Housing Policy, 19(3): 311 – 336. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19491247.2018.1540739

Friendly, A. and K. Stiphany (2018) Paradigm or Paradox? The Cumbersome Impasse of the Participatory Turn in Brazilian urban planning. Urban Studies, 56(2): 271 – 287. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0042098018768748

Stiphany, K. (2016) Aligning Disconnected Frames in Action: The Case of São Paulo’s Zeladoria Ambiental Environmental Caretakers. In Steven A. Moore (ed.) Pragmatic Sustainability. New York: Routledge, 191 – 206. PDF Download pdf

Stiphany, K. (2015) Learning Displacement: Self-Building, Educational Infrastructure, and the Politics of Development in Brazilian Informal Settlements. Doctoral Dissertation. The University of Texas at Austin.
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/32450