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Headshot of Aaron Tobey in front of a plant-filled background.

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Aaron Tobey

  • Assistant Professor, Architecture

Education

  • Ph.D., Yale University
  • MArch, Rhode Island School of Design
  • BS, Architecture, University of Cincinnati

Biography

Aaron is a designer and historian of twentieth century architecture, technology, and organizations with a focus on the intersection of histories of computing, management, and postmodernism in a global context.

His current book project, Drawing Management, gives account of the transformation of the day-to-day activities of architectural design through practices of information management alongside the attempts by large US-based architecture firms to define computer aided design, international practice, and their own organizational structures from the late 1950s to the early 1990s, arguing that these were made into objects of design in their own right. Analyzing the building projects through which these definitions were worked out, Drawing Management connects drawing and computing practices, managerial practices with office design, and urban development in the United States with the political agenda of the government of Saudi Arabia to uncover the complex beginnings of the contemporary informationalized, managerial, and global conditions of architecture.

Aaron’s ongoing research work addresses two areas. One considers the histories of computer-related design education at architecture schools in the United States as they crossed pedagogical divides between technical skills and theory courses while also serving as connection points to other academic disciplines such as business, resource management, and film/animation. The second considers the future of work and workplace design in light of changing technologies, remote work practices, and the issue of office vacancy as these present unique intersections of managerial, technological, and spatial concerns. These research areas are combined in teaching through courses that aim to reimagine the design studio as a space for exploring future definitions of architectural practice and the spaces in which practice takes place in relation to emerging computational technologies such as generative artificial intelligence.

Aaron has previously taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Yale University, and Colorado College and has worked professionally as an architectural designer at Studio AMD in Providence, RI, Studio Luz Architects in Boston, MA, Fougeron Architecture in San Francisco, CA among others.

His scholarly work has been supported by the Graham Foundation as well as the Getty Research Institute and has appeared in Technology and Culture, Architecture Theory Review, Architecture and Culture, The Journal of Architectural Education, Thresholds, and the Harvard Design Magazine.

Links

Recent & Selected Works

Articles & Selected Papers

  • Tobey, A, “Engineering Economies of Identity: Saudi Planning, Pan- Islamism, and Transnational Architectural Production,” Architecture Theory Review 27:1, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2023.2277199
  • Tobey, Aaron. "Proving Grounds: How Saudi Arabia Shaped Computer Aided Design Tools Used by American Architects, 1967–83." Technology and Culture 66, no. 4 (2025): 959-990. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.2025.a971298.
  • Tobey, Aaron. 2019. “Architect as User: Software and the Value of Work.” Journal of Architectural Education 73 (2): 146–55. doi:10.1080/10464883.2019.1633195.