Alan Bruton is an architect, designer and educator based in Venice, Italy.
For the past six years as Associate Professor at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design at the University of Houston he directed the interior architecture program, focussed on the meaningful adaptation of existing mis- dis- and un-used spaces.
For ten years prior he served as Assistant Professor of Architecture and Interior Design and Director of Summer Programs and Public Programs at Parsons School of Design in New York City, a school of the New School University.
With his Masters in Architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Alan is committed to a critical design practice engaged in exploring potentials in relationships between material, procedural, formal, spatial, economic and other sociocultural issues, in ongoing dialog with practitioners of diverse modes of cultural production.
His studio was founded in New York City in 2000 after a decade of working with architects, exhibition designers, interior designers, curators and artists on a wide range of projects. Alan has worked closely with architects and designers William McDonough, Juan Pablo Molyneux, Maya Lin, Edwin Schlossberg, Richard Gluckman, Deborah Berke, and Rem Koolhass; curators Brian Wallace, Christopher Phillips, and Maurice Berger; artists Agnes Denes, Sara Garden Armstrong, Julie Ault, Martin Beck, and Dorit Margreiter; film makers Katharina Weingartner and Marcus Wailand, and urban sociologist Anette Baldauf.
Alan was an associate with Architecture Research Office, where he was the Project Architect for the Times Square Armed Forces Recruiting Station among other projects.
Other than the US military industrial complex, he has contributed critically to projects for the photographer Larry Clark. the fashion designer Gianni Versace, the Catholic Church, Prada, and the Dalai Lama. Direct commissions have included exhibition designs for the International Center of Photography, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, the Generali Foundation in Vienna, and the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
An Irish citizen of the EU and the USA, practicing in Venice, Italy, Alan actively engages our shared international design challenges and possibilities.
