Michael Austin Lucas, RA

Areas of Expertise

Architectural Design
Applied Phenomenology/Eco-phenomenology
Vernacular Architecture
Native American Architecture
Place Theory

Profile

Born outside Pittsburgh, he recalls summers with his Grandparents on their tree farm amid Amish and Mennonite neighbors on the western side of the Appalachians. As a steelworker at Pittsburgh’s Homestead Works during several collegiate summers, he added a love for the industrial vernacular. He obtained his Bachelor of Architecture degree at Cincinnati.

Initially his professional career focused on practice with firms in the Ohio River Valley and Chesapeake Bay regions, establishing a portfolio of sensitive modern urban interventions in the Riverfront Historic District of Covington, Kentucky, Mt Adams Historic District in Cincinnati, Fell’s Point, Canton, Federal Hill, and Mt. Vernon Historic Districts in Baltimore, and the Patapsco River mill village of Oella, Maryland. From the mid 1980’s he specialized in K-12 and University projects across the mid-Atlantic. Built work where he acted as designer earned awards from Cincinnati, Central Pennsylvania, and Baltimore Chapters of the American Institute of Architects, and received publication in Progressive Architecture and Better Homes and Gardens magazines. He retains professional registration in Maryland, and acts as a consultant for regional non-profit and community groups.

Following his Master of Architecture degree at Morgan State in Baltimore, his career has focused on teaching. He has taught at Cal Poly since 1997. His classes have included Thesis Design Lab and Research Seminar [1998-2010], Universal Design/Architecture and the Body, and Native American Architecture and Place, which is cross-listed with the Ethnic Studies Department. He received the Cal Poly Distinguished Teacher Award in 2008, the first professor from the College of Architecture and Environmental Design to be so honored in almost twenty years. In 2009 he was asked to restructure the Beginning Design sequence that he coordinated 2009-13.

He served as CAED Associate Dean for Academic Affairs 2014-2017, and twice as Associate Department Head. As Faculty Emeritus, he has also taught EDES 123, ARCH/ES 326 Native American Architecture and Place, and Second Year Design. 

In Fall 2021, Michael was a Fulbright Teaching and Research Scholar at University of Prešov in the Slovak republic. He taught in the Institute for Aesthetics and Arts Culture, with courses on Embodiment, Aesthetics and the Build Environment for philosophy students, and a Survey of American Aesthetics and the Built Environment for American Studies students. He researched the wooden churches in the villages of the local Capathian Mountains, which have survived wars and social change for 300 years and has taken that work to multiple international conferences. 

He resides in the costal town of Morro Bay. 

Experience

Educational Credentials:

M. Arch, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD
B. Arch, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH   

Teaching Experience:

Fulbright Teaching and Research Scholar, Institute for Aesthetics and Arts Culture, University of Prešov, Slovak Republic.
Professor, Dept. of Architecture, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA
Associate Professor, Dept. of Architecture, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA 
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Architecture, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA 
London Studies Program/International Studies, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA 
Director, Summer Career Workshop (High School Program), Cal Poly, SLO 
Institute for Architecture and Planning, Morgan State University (long term sub) 

Professional Experience:

Planning Commissioner, City of Morro Bay, CA
Sole Proprietor, 3 Dog Studio, Morro Bay, CA Pro-bono Architectural/Planning Consultation, 
Sole Proprietor, Bush River Studio, Baltimore, MD and Abingdon, MD 
Senior Associate/ Studio Leader/ Project Architect, Murphy and Dittenhafer Architects, Baltimore, MD and York, PA 
Senior Associate/ Project Architect/Manager, Probst-Mason Architects, Baltimore, MD; 
Senior Associate/ Project Architect/Manager, Cooke and Assoc., Baltimore, MD; Senior Associate 
Project Architect/Manager, Richter, Cornbrooks and Gribble, Baltimore, MD 
Senior Associate/ Project Architect/Manager, Marks, Thomas and Assoc., Baltimore, MD 
Project Designer, Thomas Heffley Assoc, Cincinnati, OH 

Licenses/Registration:

Registered Architect, State of Maryland (1982-2022)

Professional Memberships:

Scholarship

Michael’s research is in the area of human development and spatial concept formation, place, and identity, specifically looking at the junction of individual tacit, phenomenological, and intuitive knowing with cultural conventions and disclosure of architectural and environmental attitudes. His studies focused initially on Pacific Northwest and Puebloan Native American, and 20th century American vernacular situations. These interests have developed into the areas of eco-phenomenology, and environmental ethics, and expanded to settings as diverse as Finland, Turkey, the UK and Central Europe, as well as application in his pedagogy. 

Selected Publications and Recent Research: 

He has presented his findings at venues of the American Philosophic Association, International Association of Environmental Philosophy, International Institute for Applied Aesthetics, International Qualitative Research Association, British Psychological Society, European Society of Environmental History, Society for Phenomenology and Media, American Popular Culture Association, Pecos Conference on Southwest Archeology, Northwest Society of Architectural Historians, and Gran Quivira Conference on Spanish Colonial Studies and Borderlands Research, Associated Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, and National Conference of the Beginning Design Student.

• Marion, Embodiment and the Wooden Churches of Eastern Slovakia, Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience special session at the American Philosophic Association Central Division Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, February 2025 [invited]
• Aesthetics of Embodiment and the Wooden Churches of the Carpathians in Heritages: Past and Present-Built and Social, VŠFS Prague/Czech Technical University: Routledge [in final review; est. winter 2025]
• Between Transcendental and National: Wooden Churches of Slovakia in What is Shared? Architectural Heritage in Conflict, Special Issue of Fabrications, Vol.34, No.2, Savia Paalate and Panayiota Pyla, eds. [in final review; est. fall 2024] 
• Resilience, Resistance, and Atmosphere: Bounding the Wooden Churches of the Carpathians in Conservation of Architectural Heritage 7th Edition, Tarek Teba and Antonio Di Raimo [eds.], Springer [in final review; est. summer 2024] 
• "She Speaks in Threes: Irigaray, at the Threshold between Phenomenology and Speculative Realism in Teaching Architecture". Invited chapter in Horizons of Difference: Rethinking Space, Place and Identity with Irigaray, Ruthann Kim, Yvette Russell, and Barbara Sharpe eds. SUNY Press, 2022. 
• A Knife, a Stone, a Clock: Public Space in and of Time invited chapter in Proceedings of Coordinates of Aesthetics, Art and Culture 7: Public Space in the Contexts of Aesthetics, Art Theory and Art Practice, Eva Kušnírová and Lenka Bandurová, eds.; University of Prešov, Prešov, Slovak Republic. [ebook; 2022]. 
• American Architecture: Between Halloween and Thanksgiving, invited lecture, Institute of Aesthetics and Art Culture Winter Lecture Series, University of Prešov, Prešov, Slovak Republic. October 2021 
• Social Justice in the Ecophenomenological Battle for Cerrito Peak, 2020, Concerned Philosophers for Peace 2021 Conference, Online/Fresno State University, CA, January 2021. 
• Cosmic Ecology, Poiesis, and Material Continuity at Ohkay Owingeh and Zuni, European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment/Lincoln Theological Institute Sixth International Conference at the University of Manchester, UK, May 2020 [conference cancelled due to Corona virus]. 
• Safeguarding Suspected Urban Sites, Presentation at the Pecos Conference on Southwest Archeology, Cloudcroft, New Mexico, August 2019. 
• Memory, Transcendence, Immanence: Lessons from the A:shiwi at Halona’wa: 1993-2018, Place of Memory and Memory of Place Conference, London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, St. Anne's College, Oxford, UK, June 2019. 
• New Alchemy: Speculative Realism and Beginning Design Invited chapter in Promoting Creative Thinking in Beginning Design Studios, ed. Stephen Temple, Routledge, 2018 
• Immanence Transcendence and Emptiness: A [Shaking] Minimal, Pastoral, Second Life, Contemplating Warehouses and Worship: CAVAD Architecture Symposium, Riverside, California, October 2018 
• Facelift: Aesthetics of Poiesis, Spatial Praxis and Material Continuity at Ohkay Owingeh and Zuni, Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting Rocky Mountain Division of the American Society for Aesthetics, Santa Fe, New Mexico, July, 2018 
• The Possibility of Nature Between Jan Patočka and Timothy Morton, Phenomenology and Aesthetics: The 3rd Conference on Traditions and Perspectives of the Phenomenological Movement in Central and Eastern Europe, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia, Riga, July 2017. 
• Beyond the Stones of St Denis and Pueblo Bonito: Realism, Transcendence and the Otherness of Nature, 23rd International Medieval Conference, University of Leeds, UK, July 2017. 
• She Speaks in Threes: Irigaray at the Threshold between Phenomenology and Speculative Realism [Tripling in Architectural Design], 8th Conference of the Irigaray Circle, The Institute for Theological Partnerships, University of Winchester, UK, June 2017. 
• Violet Light Meets a Saffron Sky: Poiesis for Beginning Designers, 33rd Annual Meeting, Rocky Mountain Division, american Society of Aesthetics, Santa Fe, NM, July 2016. 
• The Projective Phenomenology of Transformational Infrastructure: a Case Study of Morro Bay, ICNAP VI: Phenomenology and Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Inquiries in the Lived-World of Persons, Communities and the Natural World, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona, May 2016. 
• Presence Before Representation: Making-in-the-World as the Beginning of Beginning Design, ICNAP VI: Phenomenology and Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Inquiries in the Lived-World of Persons, Communities and the Natural World, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona, May 2016. 
• Between Ataraxia and Hēdonē: Affective Architecture, Second Annual Conference of The European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions [EPSSE], University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, July 2015. 

Selected Activities: 

• Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant Decommissioning Panel 
• Planning Commissioner, City of Morro Bay [2004-2016; 2017-2021] 
• International Editorial Board, Megaron, Journal of the Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul 
• Cal Poly Native American/Indigenous Faculty Association 

Selected Awards: 

• Best Paper Award, 7th Conservation of Architectural Heritage Conference, Portsmouth, UK 2023 
• Fulbright Teaching and Research Grant, University of Prešov, Slovak Republic, Fall, 2021 
• Honored as One of 'Twenty-Five Admired Educators' by Design Intelligence Magazine, 2016 
• Cal Poly Distinguished Teaching Award, 2008 
• Architecture Department Faculty Merit Award, 2009 
• Associated Collegiate Schools of Architecture Service Award 
• CAED Service Award

Updated 09.23.24