Mary Casper

Mary Casper is a Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and founder of Social Studies Projects (SSP), a multi-disciplinary design practice based in Los Angeles, California. Through a research-driven approach – pulling precedents from film, sociology, art history, cultural ephemera, graphic design, and beyond – the studio specializes in the design of innovative objects, interiors, spaces, and buildings that provide singular experiences that strengthen our social collective. To that end, SSP’s design process is heavily rooted in project representation, particularly at the scale of the detail, to render visible the traditionally invisible relationships among people, places, and things.

Prior to founding SSP, Casper worked as a Project Manager for the award-winning firm, Johnston Marklee, where she worked on design and implementation for exhibitions, residential new construction, and cultural restoration projects; as Director of Architecture for The Archers, where she played a central role in practice management and project execution as the practice grew into an AD 100 firm, managing design through procurement and installation for multiple large-scale, high end residential projects; and as a collaborating editor and designer with Interloop Architecture, MG & Co. and WW Architecture.

Casper co-edited of The Petropolis of Tomorrow together with Neeraj Bhatia, published by Actar in 2013. She also co-edited PLAT Journal Issues 2.5 and 3.0 with Chimaobi Izeogu, and her writing on the logics of collage in architectural design process has been published in Trans Journal.

Casper received her B.A. in Sociology and Russian Studies from Vassar College, where she graduated with Departmental Honors for her thesis on media, labor and aesthetics, documented in the work of quiltmakers in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. She went on to receive her M.Arch from Rice University School of Architecture, where she was the recipient of the Louise Hart Van Loon Fellowship, the Dorothy Evans Fellowship, and the Morris R. Pittman Award in Architecture. In 2012, she was also awarded the prestigious Gene Hackerman Award, given to an outstanding woman-identifying leader in Architecture.

Previously, Casper taught as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at USC School of Architecture and has been an invited critic at the University of Michigan, University of Kentucky, Kean University, California Polytechnic University – Pomona, Woodbury University, UCLA, and Sci-Arc.

Education

• Master of Architecture (M.Arch.) Rice University (2010 — 2014)
• Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Vassar College (2002 — 2006)

Companies

• Design Critic Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2021)
• Interiors + Design Partner Chet Callahan Architecture (2018)
• Adjunct Assistant Professor University of Southern California (2017)
• Creative Director Social Studies Projects (2016)
• Design Director, Architecture The Archers (2016 — 2018)
• Project Designer & Project Manager Johnston Marklee & Assoc (2013 — 2015)
• Teaching Assistant Rice University (2013 — 2014)
• Project Designer WW Architecture (2013 — 2014)
• Research & Exhibition Designer MG&Co. (2012 — 2014)