Irene Brisson is an architectural scholar and designer invested in the study and implementation of more inclusive and equitable design practices. They center historically marginalized narratives of architecture and building practices in Haiti and the greater Caribbean. 

As an assistant professor of architecture at Louisiana State University, Irene teaches courses in design, research methodology, critical theory, and Afro-Caribbean architecture.

Their research on practices of communication in the design of Haitian residential architecture is based in ethnographic fieldwork with contractors, architects, and residents. Considering speech, gesture, drawing, and building as inclusive categories of communication, they examine how design interactions vary in complex relationships of class, education, language, race, and nationality to reproduce and challenge the status quo.
Irene’s other on-going research interests include the intersections of the rhetorical and representational values of homes in popular culture, choreography in relationship to the built environment, community-based visual ethnography, and the politics of inclusion of people with marginalized gender, racial, and disabled identities in the built environment.

They hold a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.Arch from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation & Planning, and a PhD in Architecture from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Previously, Irene has taught at Bowling Green State University and Parsons the New School for Design.

email ︎︎   twitter ︎︎   louisiana state university ︎︎   CV ︎︎