OUR TEAM
Nathaniel Corum
San Francisco, CA
As Design Director at the Sustainable Native Communities Collaborative, Nathaniel Corum coordinates a portfolio of architectural projects and a range of technical assistance and community design workshops. He is a design architect on projects including culturally-responsive housing initiatives, ecological education centers, and the Plastiki Expedition habitation. After studying art and design at Stanford University, Nathaniel received a professional degree in architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. Nathaniel’s work has been exhibited at venues including SFMOMA, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, and the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna. He is a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, a Rose Architectural Fellowship, an Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) Senior Fellowship, a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation SEED Grant, and a Creative Capital Award. Author of Building a Straw Bale House, Nathaniel has also co-produced a set of architectural case studies and short documentary films.
Brian DeRosia
Brooklyn, NY
Brian DeRosia is an artist, fabricator, carpenter and skateboarder. As a partner at the Worskshop Design Build in Brooklyn, Brian has managed every aspect of fabrication, from initial ideation, to supply requisition, construction and implementation. With an extensive background in analog construction and digital media, Brian has created embedded systems that document haptic affects in complex social systems. As with many of the partners in spurse, Brian has an extensive background in education, process design and community organization.
Matthew Friday
New Paltz, NY
Matthew Friday is an educator, writer and transdisciplinary artist whose research focuses on the development of apparatuses and systems that examine and provoke new political ecologies. Working both collectively and individually, Matthew Friday’s research-based projects have taken up issues of urban ecology, watershed remediation and the history and future of organized labor. Matthew Friday brings over 20 years of experience working for a variety of higher education institutions in both instructional and management positions and he currently serves as Associate Professor of Critical Studies and Graduate Coordinator for the Art Department at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Matthew Friday has spoken internationally about the intersections of ecology, aesthetics and politics at venues such as NYU and The Rubin Foundation. His essays on the radical potential of creative practices have appeared in October, the Journal of Modern Craft, the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, the Brooklyn Rail and Art Journal. He has exhibited at a number of venues including MassMOCA, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Grand Arts, the Kitchen, Bemis Art Center and the BMW Guggenheim LAB.
David Jensenius
Kitchener, ON
David Jensenius is a transdisciplinary composer with an extensive background in software engineering, machine learning, artificial intelligence, systems architecture, and data analysis. Utilizing a variety of sonic way-finding systems and GIS technology, David designs augmented reality interfaces that catalyze complex social system innovation. David’s passion for creating new sense organs that unite emergent networks of human and non-human ecologies, allowing the two to enter into a conversation. David works as a media artist, sound composer, and software engineering consultant.
Iain Kerr
Montclair, NJ
Iain Kerr, Creative Practices director at the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship at Montclair State University, is a socio-ecological systems designer, teacher and writer. For the last fifteen years he has been actively developing and testing new models of creativity. Iain has formally studied philosophy and architecture and has an extensive background in higher education, including positions at the Maine College of Art, The New School For Social Research. Bates College and Montclair State University. Utilizing a systems approach to consultation, Iain has been responsible for integrating sustainable development into various aspects of large-scale organizations, from strategy and governance to policies, processes and educational programs.
Petia Morozov
Montclair, NJ
Petia Morozov is an architect, writer, educator and urban explorer. She has taught architecture, urban design, industrial design and architectural history at a number of schools throughout the United States, exploring new models for design exploration and implementation through a systems approach. She currently teaches at Parsons School of Design at the New School, NYC. Petia has been awarded research grants from Graham Foundation, LEF Foundation and Boston Society of Architects, and her work is widely published. She is a co-founding partner of MADLAB, a design and research studio with projects in a range of scales and collaborations.
Jean Pike
New York City, NY; Cerrillos, NM
Jean Pike is an experienced artist and architect who lives and works in NYC and New Mexico. Jean specializes in sustainable design and off-grid housing projects and has worked with a variety of international clients. Before joining spurse, Jean worked with three major collections of Shaker built housing. Jean has had an active career as an educator and has taught at Yale University, Pratt Institute, Pratt Rome and The University of New Mexico. For the past several years, Jean has designed and facilitated creative and accessible architectural designs for businesses, non-profit agencies, and individual stake-holders. Her creative focus has been on the overlapping conditions of the media, space and time and the entangled place between these systems where meaning resides.
Stan Pipkin
Austin, TX
Martha Farwell Pipkin focuses is on social and business innovation, community outreach and advocacy and urban architectural design. With an extensive background in geography, art and architecture and twelve years of public architecture design, Martha brings a diverse set of skills to her work with spurse. Working with multiple stake-holders, Martha has created communal educational facilities in Ghana that support creative opportunities for collaboration and innovation. Whether designing a community center, coordinating a meeting between clients, or facilitating a workshop, Martha’s focus is on catalyzing meaningful change across a variety of systems and scales.
Martha Farwell Pipkin
Austin, TX
As an architect, geographer, renewable energy business owner and humanitarian aid developer, Stan Pipkin is committed to using systems of distributed organization to explore new ways to engage material, social, biologic, and geographic contexts. Stan’s current work includes the architectural and educational integration of renewable energy systems in US and abroad. Stan’s experience in teaching, lectures and workshops spans university, secondary and primary level settings. Working in a variety of educational, entrepreneurial and community organizations, Stan has acted as a consultant, project manager and logistics coordinator for private and public sector organizations, advising on cultural change, strategic implementation and program development. Stan’s knowledge of business relations, combined with his background in systems thinking, makes it natural for him to share ideas, catalyze new commons and to translate these into working solutions.