Size

Build: 65,000 sq. ft.

Year

In Progress

Client

Family Services, The Dyson Foundation, Hudson River Housing Inc. (HRH)

Services

Urban Design

Partners

Family Services Inc.

Portrait of Chris Kroner
Chris Kroner
Principal
CK Mass Headshot 1

Chris Kroner

Principal — Poughkeepsie

Chris joined MASS to co-found the Hudson Valley Design Lab in Poughkeepsie NY in 2017. As a committed architecture and urban design educator, he moved to the Hudson Valley to convert his teaching into practice as a revolutionary and immersive model of listening and engagement. The design lab has become a thinktank for pioneering community design practice in American "Fringe Cities.” He sees architecture and design as a daily practice of outreach, showcasing adaptive reuse and new buildings both as coalition building methods to boundary span across multiple interests and regenerate city fabric. In addition to directing design projects, he leads all Poughkeepsie based community outreach work, serves as a design consultant to the Poughkeepsie Planning Board, and volunteers on a number of community and regional coalitions.

Prior to working at MASS Design Group's Hudson Valley Office, Chris has a career in award-winning architectural design practice, spending a decade as an associate partner with Dean/Wolf Architects where he conducted a series of award-winning projects in all stages of design and construction. “Restless Response: Emergency Medical Station 50” at Queens Hospital garnered the American Architecture Prize Gold Medal in Institutional Architecture in 2016, and the station was featured in Architectural Record in March 2017. Additionally, “Ephemeral Edge House,” a rural retreat home south of Albany won a Progressive Architecture Award in 2012 and a New York City AIA Honor Award in 2019.

Chris holds his Master of Architecture degree from Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) where he received the Lucille Smyser Lowenfish Memorial Prize, and his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia, where he received the Sean Steele-Nicholson Memorial Award. He teaches studios and seminars regularly at Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning, as well as in the Pratt Institute’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design programs, and has held lecture positions at institutions worldwide.

Design Team

Chris Kroner, Evalina Knodel, Esther Ndacyayisenga

In October, MASS completed a project with Family Services Inc, a non profit in Poughkeepsie, NY to develop conceptual designs for the Family Partnership Center, a building that houses social services, youth programs and healthcare non-profits for the city.

The design will support the mission of the center as well as ideate long term programmatic and architectural strategies. Applying our skills working in health service delivery abroad to new contexts in the US, our team held meetings and workshops with partner organizations, teenagers, parents, public officials, and civil society leaders to best determine how this facility can meet the community’s needs in the future.