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Stefania Palmyra Geraki

  • Assistant Professor, Architecture

Education

  • B.A. Architecture | Ethics, Politics & Economics (double major), Yale University, 2006
  • M.Arch., Yale University, 2010

Biography

Palmyra Geraki is a designer, educator, writer, and editor. She is the founding principal of the award-winning interdisciplinary studio PALMYRA and a licensed architect in the United States and Greece.

Before founding her own Chicago-based practice, Palmyra worked on affordable housing and other mission-driven projects as Project Manager and Project Architect at Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects in San Francisco, on a wide range of mid-rise and high-rise residential and commercial projects as an Associate at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects in New York City, and on exhibition design and adaptive reuse projects at Inteform in Thessaloniki.

Palmyra’s experience in professional practice across typologies and project phases has afforded her opportunities to work collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders. Through these interactions she has developed a strong commitment to an open-ended and interdisciplinary design approach that values knowledge, dialogue, and nimbleness and views complexity, constructibility, affordability, sustainability, community engagement, and ethical labor practices as opportunities rather than hindrances to abstract design ideas.

She is committed to building horizontal relationships with allied fields, exploring new modes of practice, and developing new and expanded skill sets that can help usher our field into a more optimistic version of the future. This is also where Palmyra’s interest in technology lies: in the processes that allow products, machines, software, processes, to break disciplinary boundaries and market restrictions to become part of a greater knowledge commons.

Many of these ideas are explored through a pedagogical lens in The Organizer’s Guide to Architecture Education (Routledge, 2024), a book that Palmyra coauthored with Kirsten Day, Peggy Deamer, Andrea Dietz, Tessa Forde, Jessica Garcia Fritz, and Valérie Lechêne. The book argues that organizing is a key part of an expanded architectural skill set that can enable architecture students to respond to an ever-changing world by connecting, convening, and forming meaningful coalitions for collective stewardship of the planet.

Focusing on the history of environmental design, Palmyra’s current research project uses power mapping, network analysis, and oral history to render visible the complexities and contingencies of the design process.

Palmyra was a Skyline Editor for the New York Review of Architecture in 2022 and 2023 and her writing has appeared in several publications. She currently serves on the boards of AIA Chicago Foundation and the labor advocacy organization The Architecture Lobby (T-A-L).

Palmyra is a passionate teacher. Before joining the faculty at SARUP, Palmyra taught at the University of Illinois Chicago, at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and at Yale University. She was a member of the organizing committee of the 2021 and 2022 Architecture Beyond Capitalism (A-B-C) Summer School, and she has been an invited juror at universities across North America.

Palmyra received her B.A. in 'Architecture' and 'Ethics, Politics & Economics' from Yale University and her M.Arch. from the Yale School of Architecture. At Yale, she was the recipient of the George Nelson Traveling Fellowship, the President's Public Service Fellowship, and the Curtis Prize.

Palmyra grew up in Thessaloniki, Greece, and has lived and/or worked in New Haven, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Chicago.

Links

Recent & Selected Works

Contemporary gallery with white walls, red entry corridor, and sculptural artworks: a tall central column and colorful wall-mounted forms.
“Not All White Walls” (exhibition design), California college of the Arts, San Francisco, 2019.
Two-story brick building with large windows set behind a grassy field with shrubs, under a blue sky with scattered clouds.
“Fox River Wellness” (commercial new construction, healthcare), Algonquin, IL, 2026.
Left: illustrated plaza plan with trees, people, and seating. Right: stacked cube lattice sculpture in gradient colors surrounded by pedestrians.
(left) “Urban Living Room” (proposal), Logroño, Spain, 2023 | (right) “Field Tetris” (proposal), Chicago, 2020.
Top: faint line drawings of varied building facades. Bottom: abstract collage of geometric interior with beams, stairs, and layered forms.
(top) “Three-Flat Etude” (residential new construction), Chicago, 2020 | (bottom) “Venice palimpsest” (drawing), Venice, Italy, 2009.
Line drawings of interior spaces with arches, furnishings, and fixtures, showing multiple room layouts and sectional views in a grid.
“Woodlawn Wonderland” (interior design), Chicago, 2020.
Colorful outdoor installation with painted canopy panels on poles, small shed, and people walking and gathering on grass and pathways.
“By the Book” (pavilion, community engagement), Chicago Sukkah Design Festival, North Lawndale, Chicago, 2024

Awards

  • American Institute of Architects Chicago Chapter Honor Award in Interior Architecture (Small) for project “Not All White Walls”, 2024.
  • BIG SEE Architecture Award 2026

Books

Dietz, et. al. The Organizer's Guide to Architecture Education, Routledge, 2024.

Built Works

Geraki, Palmyra / PALMYRA PLLC. By the Book. 2024, North Lawndale, Chicago, Illinois.

Publications

Geraki, Palmyra. Book Review: Architecture and Abstraction. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 84.4, December 2025.