Tolya Stonorov

Tolya Stonorov, Associate Professor of Architecture and Associate Director of Norwich University’s School of Architecture + Art, received a Master's Degree in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was awarded the Chester Miller traveling fellowship, the Howard Friedman Thesis prize, and multiple grants.

Stonorov has practiced design-build since 2006, when she co-founded her firm, Stonorov Workshop. Eighteen years of professional experience inform Stonorov’s courses, which marry the theoretical and poetic, with concrete grounding in technical and professional realities. Her work explores the nature of fabrication, examining the relationship between digital and traditional methods of making, with a focus on materiality, process, and craft. Stonorov, whose professional and student work has been published in national magazines, teaches second-year and advanced-level studios and a course on professional practice and construction documents.

Stonorov’s design-build studios center around experiential service learning and solving important societal problems. Through these studios, she provides a thorough overview of the architecture profession and works to instill in her students a profound understanding of the implications of design decisions. This work is fundamentally fulfilling, as the design-build model is an ideal way to experience how architecture can specifically aid underserved populations. Professional expertise and research combine with enthusiastic student engagement and ideas to create true experiential learning immersion. Where work is the medium to address social justice, students experience the tangible results of how their designs and labor have the power to aid communities in need.

Stonorov’s firm, Stonorov Workshop, a design-build collaborative founded on the belief that good design makes life better and that making and designing are intrinsically intertwined, strives to use sustainable materials and methods in honest, simple expressions to create spaces that outlast their original use. Stonorov Workshop’s designs are developed with careful consideration of client needs, rigorous study of the site, and an open and involved creative process tempered by ecological sensibility. Stonorov’s professional design-build work ensures that her teaching is fresh and current and that she, too, is continually growing as a designer.
 

M.Arch, University of California, Berkeley

Tolya Stonorov has received multiple awards for excellence in her professional and academic work from the American Institute of Architects’ New England and Vermont chapters among others. In addition, Stonorov received the Vermont Women in Higher Education Peggy Williams Award for her teaching and scholarship. She gives lectures and participates in symposium panels nationally and internationally.

AP 211 Architectural Design I

AP312 Architecture Design IV

AP412 Architectural Design VI

Books:

FABRIC[ated]  | Fabric Innovation and Material Responsibility in Architecture.
The Design-Build Studio | Crafting Meaningful Work in Architecture Education.

Papers:

International EEAE VIBRARCH Conference, Paper presentation, Valencia Spain.
Body as Context, Skin as Vessel, National Conference on the Beginning Design Student: University of Colorado, Denver. 
University of Colorado, Denver; Design Build as an Armature for Social Justice, Invited lecturer to the Architecture School.