Alan Mark Paukman

Adjunct Lecturer in Architecture

Alan Mark Paukman designs, teaches, photographs, and writes about architecture.

We live in an age where digital production is abundant and meaningful physical experience is scarce. Alan’s work focuses on what only buildings can do: shape mass, material, light, and the way our bodies feel in a space. He treats architecture as the design of feeling, not the
production of images or documents. His spaces ground perception and bring people back to the present.

He leads an independent practice across cultural, residential, retail, and workplace projects. His work favors clear geometry, honest materials, and direct sensory experience. He is also a co-founder of Swelter House. The studio designs and builds sauna and bathing structures using heat, water, and wood. Earlier, he worked at Foster + Partners on large commercial and institutional projects. There he developed a disciplined approach to coordination, craft, and execution. Before architecture, he worked in fashion and jewelry design, which shaped his sensitivity to proportion, detail, and tactility.

Years of travel and documentation inform his practice. He studies enduring buildings and how material, proportion, and light behave over time. These observations guide his work toward permanence and scale rather than style.

His teaching follows the same logic. As images become easier to generate, he asks students to
focus on what can only be built. Studios emphasize making, material intuition, and attention to the body. The goal is simple: design work that earns its place in the physical world.