Irene Cheng, California College of the Arts

Irene Cheng is an architectural historian, critic, and designer whose work explores the intersections of architecture history, politics, and new media. Her current project, entitled “The Shape of Utopia: Architectures of Radical Reform in Nineteenth-Century America,” explores the geometry of architectural projects affiliated with anarchist, socialist, abolitionist, free love, and other radical antebellum movements. In 2009, Irene collaborated with Brett Snyder to create Museum of the Phantom City, an iPhone app that allows users to view past utopian proposals for the city of New York while walking in the city. The project was included in the United States pavilion at the 2012 Venice Biennale. Cheng is coeditor with Bernard Tschumi of The State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century (The Monacelli Press, 2004).