Mark Nelson

Scholarship:  

Mark uses architectural drawings and designs to visually comment on the practices of architecture, interior design and architectural drawing.  This meta-critique follows in the traditions of architect/illustrators such as Piranesi, Boullee and Ferriss.  He coined the term “haute design” to describe his work and that of a growing number of artists and designers who create artifacts that have the trappings of functional objects but are primarily about ideas, paralleling the tradition of haute couture in fashion.

Some of the issues that Mark comments on include the relationship between the human body and Modernist architecture, the role of ornament in architecture, and digital illustration.  Current projects include virtual guerilla makeovers for prominent Modern buildings such as Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and UW-Madison’s own Humanities Building.  These virtual makeovers use a vocabulary of body parts such as tongues and hair, along with jewelry and piercings, to enhance the building designs and to make a connection to the human body.

Mark’s work has been disseminated internationally in print and shows, and has received numerous awards including a Juror Award and six Awards of Merit in the prestigious annual international illustration competition sponsored by the American Society of Architectural Illustrators.  He has also published several refereed journal articles and has presented papers at numerous international conferences.

Rather than being an outsider looking in, Mark’s work builds on his own experiences; he received an MArch degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1984, and for the next fifteen years worked professionally as an architect and interior designer for primarily Fortune 500 clients.  He contributed to projects by the award-winning design firms SOM, ISD+AI and Gary Lee Partners.  Clients included Sears, Prudential, United Airlines, Northwest Airlines, JMB, First Boston, and Shearson Lehman.  Sites included Chicago’s John Hancock, O’Hare Airport and Philip Johnson’s 190 South LaSalle.  During that time he also worked professionally as an architectural illustrator in both traditional and digital media. 

Teaching:  

Mark became an Assistant Professor in 1999, and since then has taught a wide variety of courses across the interior design curriculum.  His current focus is on four courses: the capstone 623 ID IV course that explores custom design through a restaurant project; 320 Sketching and Rendering and 323 Computer Aided Design, both part of the design visualization curriculum; and 633 Advanced Computer Applications.  He also developed a special topics course focusing on Haute Design, which brought his scholarship expertise into the classroom.

Outside the classroom, Mark regularly gives rendering workshops to students at other universities, and has also presented to professional groups such as the International Interior Design Association.

Service:  

Mark is currently active in the Design Communication Association and the American Society of Architectural Illustrators.  In the past, he turned an interest in low income housing and building preservation into a part time business that provided full architectural design services at reduced fees for the gut renovation of early 20th Century apartment buildings on Chicago’s west side.  Although a part time endeavor, at one point Mark and his business partner had over $10 million of projects on the boards.

His interest in historic preservation led to a leadership role in Century Homes, a community based project in Berwyn, Illinois that ended up winning an Illinois Governor’s Hometown Award.  This interest also led to the opportunity to illustrate a page in the World Book Encyclopedia that shows historic American styles of houses.