Sarah Gunawan (2019-20)

Emily Kutil is a Detroit-based architectural designer, researcher, and Assistant Professor of Architecture at Lawrence Technological University College of Architecture and Design.

Emily’s research investigates the intertwined social structures, physical structures, and power structures that shape our world. She makes drawings, publications, installations, models, and other story-machines, often using collective, interdisciplinary processes. She is a founding member of We the People of Detroit Community Research Collective, a collaboration between community activists, academics, and designers mapping geographies of austerity in Detroit. She also coordinates Black Bottom Street View, an immersive representation of a historic Detroit neighborhood destroyed by urban renewal, which was awarded a Knight Arts Challenge Grant in 2016. Her current research investigates Great Lakes water and energy infrastructures and their entanglements with land, life, and systems of power.

Previously, Emily was the 2019-2020 Reyner Banham Fellow at the University at Buffalo. She has exhibited work in Detroit and Los Angeles, and has published articles in Scapegoat, Horizonte, and Dimensions. She has worked with architecture firms and artist studios in Detroit, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor and Vermont. Emily holds a BSArch from the University of Cincinnati and a MArch with High Distinction and Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Michigan.