William Mangold is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism at Drexel University. He studied architecture and fine arts at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and environmental psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Before joining Drexel, he taught at Pratt Institute and worked for the New York City firm Ivan Brice Architecture. Guided by an interest in the interactions between people and place and underscored by a dedication to social responsibility, his work bridges practice, pedagogy, and theory. Trained as a cabinetmaker, he integrates hands-on making with critical inquiry into atmosphere, materiality, and lived experience. He is the author of The Interiors Theory Primer (Routledge, 2025), praised internationally as a foundational text for the discipline, and co-editor of the widely cited People, Place, and Space Reader (Routledge, 2014).

My father is a carpenter and cabinetmaker and I grew up on jobsites and in the shop before attending the Rhode Island School of Design. At RISD I received degrees in fine arts and architecture, with a training grounded in materials and making. After RISD my trajectory was not linear, but I worked for a small award-winning architecture firm in New York City, and got my first taste of teaching. Realizing I wanted to pursue teaching, and recognizing my interest in the social processes that shape and are shaped by design, I returned to school for a PhD in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. There I learned social theory and research methods, bringing those skills into dialogue with my background in craft and making. This opened an interesting pathway: teaching interior architecture and design, first at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and currently as an assistant professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia. While teaching, I’ve maintained a small design practice and I’ve expanded my scholarship, publishing The People, Place, and Space Reader (2014) and The Interiors Theory Primer (2025).

As a teacher, I often begin with the question, “What is good design?” This question opens space for inquiry, dialogue, and ethical reflection. It invites students to define criteria, engage in critical thinking, and examine the social and material consequences of their decisions. I understand teaching as a shared journey of intellectual and creative growth, one that is shaped by how we ask questions, pursue knowledge, and reflect on our values.

Asking “What is good design?” draws on a number of pedagogical traditions that are woven into my work. It frames learning as a process of inquiry and critical engagement rather than the passive absorption of information—a practice drawn from Plato’s dialectical method. It acknowledges my own curiosity and initiates a collaborative process of discovery, echoing Jacques Rancière’s belief in the equality of intelligence. It invites an ongoing dialogue that embraces reflection, bringing us closer and closer to knowledge, in the pragmatist mode of John Dewey. It surfaces questions of ethics, power, and social responsibility—central concerns in the pedagogy of Paulo Freire. It also opens up our capacity to see, feel, and respond to the world, and in the spirit of Maxine Greene, it hints at the transformative potential of our actions. Taken as a whole, I believe my role as an educator is to bring students closer to self-actualization while engaging with ethical, material, and emotional experiences of the built environment.

As a designer, I approach practice as a form of inquiry—an embodied and material process that investigates how interiors shape lived experience. My background as a cabinetmaker and builder grounds this work in craft and detailing, while my training in architecture and environmental psychology provides tools for spatial organization, atmosphere, and social analysis. Through my independent practice, I have completed residential and adaptive reuse projects in Philadelphia and New York, exploring issues of domesticity, well-being, accessibility, and atmosphere. I value principles of care and repair, working with existing buildings to enhance sustainability, preserve meaningful historic details, and cultivate atmospheres that honor both past and present. These projects serve as testing grounds for ideas I also develop in scholarship and teaching. Beyond client work, I pursue speculative and experimental projects, from full-scale installations to narrative drawings. Across these different settings, my design work integrates theory, pedagogy, and making, driven by a commitment to social responsibility and to the imaginative possibilities of interior environments.

As a scholar, my research and writing grows out of my personal experiences in the world. Moving from suburban Detroit to rural Kansas sparked my curiosity about relations between people and place, and continues to shape my interest in the environment and spatial experience. Professional work taught me to examine and question the myriad processes of architectural production, and specific discourses and practices such as design competitions or sustainability. I have learned to look closely at built spaces—from homes to public spaces—and how they support or deny human experiences. These interests and pursuits, especially when framed by questions of social justice, shape my focus on experiences of place, and design practices that re-work social and spatial conventions. Today, my scholarship unfolds across three strands: developing theoretical foundations for the discipline, studying the politics of people and place, and exploring how atmosphere, materiality, and making shape lived experience.