Image by David Costanza
David Costanza has been named the 2020 Rotch Travelling Scholarship recipient. He will receive a stipend to spend at least six months travelling and studying architecture around the world.
29 applicants ultimately completed the preliminary program asking competitors to imagine a radical reconceptualization of an existing housing typology—the accessory dwelling—as an avenue for growth in Boston’s 21st century “Radical Accessories”. Projects were required to include at least three residential units plus one publicly.
As David was runner-up in 2019, he was automatically entered in the final competition: “On Display: A museum for Architecture in Boston’s Copley Square”. The Rotch Competition focused on the design of a museum of and for architecture in downtown Boston as an exploration of architecture’s mediation between historical and contemporary contexts. The brief prompted participants to consider the role that the museum plays within the twenty-first century urban environment most broadly. It challenged participants to take a stand on the role of architecture’s iconicity, as well as its impact in shaping culture and history.
David Costanza is the director and lead designer of DCS (David Costanza Studio). Through practice and teaching, his research addresses the emerging digital and technical advancements reshaping the discipline. The work aims to establish a dialogue between representation, computational design tools, digital manufacturing, and the innovative use of building materials. David Costanza is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received a Masters of Architecture with a concentration in Computation and a Master’s of Science in Architecture Building Technology. David Costanza has previously taught at Rice University for four years as the Technology Fellow and is currently teaching in the Department of Architecture at Cornell AAP.