Kevin Shapiro

2018 Fellow

Born and raised in Orange County, California, Kevin Shapiro has been skateboarding since an early age — a passion that has contributed to his attitudes towards architecture and design. He studied in Mammoth Lakes, Fullerton, and Costa Mesa, California before transferring to Portland State University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. Following his two years in the Pacific Northwest, Kevin was admitted to the University of Southern California School of Architecture where received his Master of Architecture degree in 2018.

As a designer at MADA s.p.a.m., Kevin worked closely with architect QingYun Ma to design and build the “Pole House,” a pavilion hanging from an existing electrical pole in Yushan Town, Lantian County, Xi’an, China completed in 2017.

As a MADWORKSHOP Fellow, Kevin developed a collapsible plywood chair and table set. The chair was designed to lay flat for transport, inspired by Kevin’s years of consistently uprooting during his undergraduate studies. The table consists of glass and plywood to display and celebrate the coffee table book. Both the chair and the table were designed in a dialogue between hand sketching and 3d modeling. Sketching is vital to Kevin’s design development process in addition to being an avenue for communicating ideas with others.

Kevin is currently a designer at Anacapa Architects in Portland, Oregon.