Naomi Darling Architecture
Our Team
Naomi Darling
Principal
Naomi Darling, AIA, NCARB, LEEP AP BD+C is the founding principal of Naomi Darling Architecture and Five College Associate Professor of Sustainable Architecture. An architect with a background in environmental and structural engineering, climate change science, ceramics and sculpture, Naomi brings a distinctive approach to every project that draws upon her diverse background. Every project is a collaboration with both the client and site-design solutions reflect the translation of ideas into built material form. Naomi personally oversees the design and development of every project.
Naomi received a BSE degree from Princeton University in structural engineering and architectural design and a Masters of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture. At Princeton, Naomi’s thesis work on the South Pole Station was recognized with the Calvin Dodd MacCracken Senior Thesis Award-the highest thesis award in the School of Engineering. While at Yale, Naomi was awarded the George Nelson Traveling Scholarship for research into“The Integration of Architecture and Landscape in a Peripatetic experience of the Chinese Garden.”In 2011, the Kernan Tea House was included in EP:2011, an annual exhibition of the work of emerging architects selected by the AIA Center for Emerging Professionals.
Prior to founding Naomi Darling Architecture in 2011, Naomi worked in Seattle, Washington, with Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects, in New Haven CT with Apicella + Bunton Architects and in Tokyo, Japan with Kengo Kuma and Associates.
As Five College Associate Professor of Sustainable Architecture, Naomi teaches in a shared position between Mount Holyoke College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Naomi has also taught at the Yale School of Architecture, Brown University, Hampshire College and the Dalhousie University Faculty of Architecture and Planning.
Nicole De Araujo
Design Intern
Nicole De Araujo joined after graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies. She has taken several studios with Naomi Darling including Designing for Life, a year-long course with a January-term field component in Thailand. After graduating, Nicole led the effort, with Professors Naomi Darling and Sue Darlington, to design and publish a 300-page book of essays and design projects from the class.
More recently Nicole has worked with Naomi on the Maier Camerlenghi Addition and graphic design including the website. Nicole is interested in creating sustainable shared and inclusive spaces that have room growth and adaptation. She looks forward to expanding her design knowledge and skills through Naomi Darling Architecture.
Frequent Collaborators
Joan Kang
2021 Summer Intern
Joan Kang is a rising junior at Mount Holyoke, majoring in Architectural Studies and Sociology. She is interested in the affordable housing landscape, and studying the intersections of race, class, and environmental responsibility within design. She hopes to explore how architecture can be life-affirming and play an active role towards social change. Joan is excited to develop her design skills and build upon her interests with Naomi Darling Architecture.
Darrell Petit
Darrell PetitSculptorDarrell Petit is a sculptor who has been working in quarries around the world for the past thirty years. Born in Montreal Canada, Petit received his BA Urban Studies from Brown University, later studying at the Hochschule der Kunstein Berlin, Germany and the Kyoto University of the Arts, in Japan. During this time, Darrell started to work with granite, a material through which he has explored a wide range of subjects and experiences. He is best known for creating large-scale, often monumental sculpture from granite elements, which he painstakingly quarries, cuts, carves and assembles into interdependently balanced situations often with precariousness and contingency. Darrell has collaborated with Naomi incorporating granite into projects and adding a tactile element that serves to ground the projects to place such as in the Kernan Tea House and Kernan Studio. Darrell and Naomi also collaborate on projects for the public urban environment such as in Old Saybrook,CT.
Ray K Mann
Principal of RK Studio Architecture
Ray K Mann, principal of RK Studio Architecture and Professor of Architecture at UMass Amherst. Mann received a B.A. Environmental Design from Harvard-Radcliffe and a Masters in Architecture from The Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her award-winning projects include the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, the MIT Media Lab ‘Brain Opera’ and Salamander Restaurant in Boston. As principal of RK Studio Architecture she received a Progressive Architecture Young Architects Award in 1993 for the innovative nature of her practice, and she continues to work with a variety of new materials and unusual design applications. Ray and Naomi have taught Design 5 together at UMass for many years and this has led naturally to collaborating on projects including the Sunderland Kayak Kiosk, shed and restrooms for Riverside Park and a winning competition entry for the Amherst Bandshell.
Past Team Members
There have been many gifted interns throughout the years that have used their diverse skills and knowledge to contribute to projects. Many of our past team members have gone on to continue their education, work for other firms and develop new skills and knowledge of their disciplines.
Maya Gamble | Design Intern 2017 - 2019
Projects:
- Petit Container Studio
- Solar Time
- Sandy Hook Memorial
- Odyssey Bookstore Space Planning and Design
- Amherst Bandshell
- Kasa Pavilion
Nicholas Jeffway | Design Intern 2015 - 2017
Projects:
- Old Saybrook Great Park
- Nitobe Memorial Hall
Spencer Hoyt | Design Intern 2013 - 2015
Projects:
- Old Saybrook Great Park
- Nitobe Memorial Hall
- Eddy & Currents
Jordan Bensley | Design Intern 2014
Projects:
- Nitobe Memorial Hall
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