Ryan Ludwig

Ryan Ludwig is a licensed architect, writer, and educator whose work focuses on design as a means to foster co-productive and equitable outcomes at the intersection of architecture, climate change, ecological resilience, and society.  He explores these themes through critical writing, organizing + activism, and design practice, all of which inform his teaching.

He is the author of the book Beyond Sustainable: Architecture’s Evolving Environments of Habitation (Routledge, 2021) which re-conceptualizes the relationship between humans and their architectural surrounds, challenging how we might better cope and adapt to the ongoing transformation of the planet. Ludwig is also a co-editor of the book The Function of Form by Farshid Moussavi, published by Actar Press (2009/2020). He is currently working on a book titled The Architecture of a Decent Home that focuses on Resident Owned Communities of manufactured housing, regarding them as a viable response to the intersecting crises of housing affordability and climate change. The project has been supported by the RWU Foundation to Support Scholarship and Teaching

His work has been supported by a Centrum Artist Residency (2018), MacDowell (2019), Art Omi: Architecture Residency Fellowship (2021) and the Pogue Wheeler DAAP Faculty Travelling Fellowship (2021), and he was an Enterprise, Rose Architectural Fellowship Finalist (2016). He is a member of the 2024 ACSA cohort for the Academy for the Public Scholarship on the Built Environment: CLIMATE ACTION.

Ludwig is also an active member of The Architecture Lobby (TAL)  and has previously served as the coordinator of its Green New Deal Working Group. The working group’s efforts focus on organizing for liberatory principles and ecological justice as they relate to architectural labor, the built environment, and sustainable futures for all.

He teaches at the Roger Williams University Cummings School of Architecture and is a graduate of Cornell AAP and the Harvard GSD. Prior to joining RWU Ludwig has held teaching positions at Syracuse SoA, SUNY Buffalo a+p, University of Cincinnati, and Cornell AAP. Before teaching he worked in a variety of diverse architectural offices such as MOS, Cannon Design, Blaze Makoid Architecture, and SPAN Architecture, and currently maintains his own design research practice: Ludwig-ArchOffice (L-AO).

Web Links
Beyond Sustainable
The Function of Form
TAL GND Working Group

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Books:

Beyond Sustainable: Architecture’s Evolving Environments of Habitation, Routledge | Taylor & Francis Group, New York, London (2021)

The Function of Form, by Farshid Mousavi, with Editors Daniel Lopez, Garrick Ambrose, Ben Fortunato, Ryan Ludwig and Ahmadreza Schricker, Actar Press, Barcelona (2009, 2020)

Essays & Papers:

“Rewriting the Dream: Sub-Urban Living and the Potentials of the Productive Landscape” paper, peer reviewed, ACSA 109th Annual Meeting Conference, St. Louis, MI (2021)

“Of Life and Death: The Interior Atmosphere-Environments of the Greenhouse and the Gas Chamber” paper, peer reviewed, ACSA 108th Annual Meeting Conference, San Diego, CA (2020)

"Formation and Variation: Woltereck's Concept of Reaktionsnorm and the Potentials of Environment" journal article, peer reviewed, Thresholds 42, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press (2014) “Models in Development: The Problem of Form and the Primacy of Vision” journal article, peer reviewed, MOINOPLOIS: Living in the Spatial Shift 01 (2012)

SELECTED PROJECT IMAGES