People
Founders and Collaborators
Alison Sant, Co-Founder and Partner
Alison Sant is an artist, designer, author, and teacher. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and been awarded artist residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the McColl Center for Visual Art. In 2006, she co-founded the Studio for Urban Projects. For more than 15 years, the Studio has focused on public programming, urban prototyping, and civic dialog—aiming to bring equity and sustainability to the design of cities. In her role as partner, Sant was a design captain for the Market Street Prototyping Festival, a designer-in-residence at the Exploratorium’s Bay Observatory, and a member of the Bionic team for the Bay Area Resilient By Design Challenge. In 2016, the Studio for Urban Projects was honored for contributing to its field as members of the Yerba Buena 100. Since its founding, the Studio has produced over one hundred events, bringing the public together with advocates, scientists, civil servants, academics, designers, and artists to discuss the future of cities. The Studio has been commissioned by the Exploratorium, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco Planning Department, Headlands Center for the Arts, SPUR, Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Zero One San Jose, Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, and Eyebeam Art and Technology Center. For thirteen years, Sant taught field-based classes at the California College of the Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of California, Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. In 2022, Sant wrote From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities published by Island Press. She received a BFA from New York University in photography and interactive telecommunications, and her Master’s in Design from the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley.
Richard Johnson, Co-Founder and Partner
Richard Johnson is a designer. For the past twenty years, he has worked on a wide variety of design-build projects focusing primarily on the public realm. His research-based practice bridges the fields of art and architecture. Johnson is a skilled fabricator, designer, and builder. His work is based on creating unique building systems that can be deployed as modular elements and reassembled or reconfigured to react to site and program. Johnson has also designed architectural projects, including commercial spaces for Southern Exposure, Post Tool, and the Studio for Urban Projects, as well as residential buildings in San Francisco and Marin, California. In addition, he has created museum exhibitions for the Exploratorium and Zeum. Johnson has held teaching positions at the California College of Art and UC Berkeley. He received his Master of Architecture Degree from the University of California Berkeley and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute.
— CURRENT AND PAST STAFF
