Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program
Field of Specialization:	Architecture
Name:	Ms. Kristen Teutonico
Official Address:	Parsons the New School for Design, New York
Indian Host Institution:	Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies Mumbai, Maharashtra
Duration of Grant & Start Date :	Duration: 9 months August 2011

Brief Bio:

Ms. Kristen Teutonico received her Masters of Architecture from Parsons the New School for Design in 2009 and a Bachelors of Science from SUNY Buffalo in 2006. During her undergraduate in 2005 she completed a study abroad program at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica. Sustainable community planning and the design for a visitors' center were studied and proposed for the booming tourist economy for the city of Monteverde, Costa Rica. She has taught at Parsons since 2008, currently holding a part-time faculty position for a class based on global issues in design and visuality. She also works in Manhattan at Platt Byard Dovell White, a firm that works both in the restoration and preservation of landmarked structures and the design of new buildings within the city. Her personal work focuses on the anthropological and ecological implications of architectural and infrastructural development in cities. Her master's thesis looked closely at these issues through a design of a community center and tourist hostel over the Prospect Expressway in Brooklyn. She hopes to continue these ideas through her grant in Mumbai and also through a Ph.D. after her work in India is complete. Upon returning to the U.S., she plans to rework her research as a research paper to be published and to move onto a Ph.D. program in the discipline of urbanism in relation to sustainable land use development and cultural studies as well as continue to practice architecture and become licensed. Focusing on the urban form, socio-makeup, and ecology located within the Tansa River Basin in Mumbai, Ms. Teutonico's Fulbright-Nehru research project is an exercise in learning and responding. The project will strive to devise a site specific design proposal through an understanding of visually extracted data formatted as maps and diagrams and an ethnographic study of the area. This design will be born of the needs of the area and its community in its transformation into an inevitable tourist region.