David Turturo

David Turturo is an architect (licensed NY & LEED AP), educator, and in the final stages of Ph.D. completion at Yale University. Turturo’s dissertation, “Caryatid: Architecture and the Framing of Bodies” (advised by Pier Vittorio Aureli), reconsiders the intersection of gender, politics, and form in architecture by surveying figures and subjects in conspicuously marginalized buildings. This trans-historical critique of the western canon ranges from Classical antiquity (the Erechtheion maidens) to medieval scaffolds (le gibet de montfaucon), colossal skyscrapers (the Statue of Liberty) and Austrian postmodernism (the orgies mysteries theatre). Turturo’s research has been published in AA Files, Paprika!, and Metropolis, as well as in edited volumes and presented in workshops and seminars at UPenn, Syracuse, Yale, and most recently for the GTA biennial doctoral workshop, ETH Zürich. In addition to the dissertation, Turturo is presently working on a critical monograph about the work of John Hejduk and an oral history project about postwar architecture culture.

Turturo has taught design, urbanism, history, and preservation coursework at Harvard, Boston Architectural College, Northeastern University, and Yale. Notable among these were the popular design studio “Wilderness Urbanisms” and the novel seminar “The City as Social Contract.” At Yale, Turturo organized the exhibition “Swissness Applied” and the symposium “Image, Architecture, Place,” debating the role of cutting-edge imaging practices in the work of innovative architects. Turturo’s award-winning architectural design work has focused on adaptive reuse, preservation, and sustainability—in New York, Boston, and San Francisco—and includes collaborations with CookFox, Butz+Klug, Bruner/Cott, Ashley McGraw, Perkins+Will, and OpAL. Prior to Yale, Turturo completed an M.Des. in architectural history at Harvard and a B.Arch. at Syracuse University.