Christian Nakarado

Christian Nakarado grew up in the mountains outside of Golden, Colorado. He received his B.A. in Architecture from Yale College and his M. Arch from the Yale School of Architecture. He has spent the last two decades working in practices on the east and west coasts of the United States, as well as in Canada and England. He is principal of Slow Built Studio, a research and design practice based in New Haven, Connecticut with projects across multiple states and scales. These include pro bono architectural services provided to the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Nation, focusing on historic buildings on the site of the former Mt Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School in Isabella County, Michigan. He is a licensed architect in New York, Connecticut, and Michigan. He is also a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the American Indian Council of Architects and Engineers (AICAE), a board member of the Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning, and Design (ISAPD), and is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

Currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Christian previously held positions at the Birmingham School of Architecture and Design, at Daoust Lestage in Montréal, at Sage and Coombe Architects in New York, and at Michael Maltzan Architecture in Los Angeles. His teaching and research both focus on impermanence in design and indigenous precedents for non-extractive making. Christian's research proposes ways to transition from heavy, resource-intensive models of building and development to simpler, lighter methods of low-carbon fabrication, including objects that are designed to degrade.