Phillip N.

PJ was a student at VAI during highschool. He was the 2008 Visual Arts Sterling Scholar at Hillcrest High School. He studied Architecture at the University of Utah, and later earned a Master’s in Architecture at Yale University. While at Yale, PJ received a competitive internship to work in Osaka, Japan for a summer for one of the largest general contractors in the country. When asked about his time as a student at VAI, PJ said:

“Figure drawing greatly helped me down the road when I started architecture school, instilling a strong sensitivity for human scale & spatial awareness. I remember having to make a large charcoal drawing at Yale in the first summer. It instantly brought back memories of drawing with vine charcoal [at] Figure Academy during the summer at VAI.”

PJ has lived in Japan since 2015 and is working as an architectural designer. In his first job in Tokyo, he worked on high profile projects for commercial buildings, hotels and offices that were slated to be completed before the 2020 Summer Olympics. He later worked at a bilingual Japanese/English startup designing & developing co-working spaces in Tokyo and Kobe for two years. He is currently working on theme park architecture as a facility designer.