Project Coordinators

Valeria, a native New Yorker, coordinates the execution of design and education projects about the city’s inner workings as CUP's Program Manag…

Valeria, a native New Yorker, coordinates the execution of design and education projects about the city’s inner workings as CUP's Program Manager. She comes from a background in visual studies and film and architectural theory with a degree from Brown University in Modern Culture and Media (magna cum laude, 2004). In addition to working many years in the non-profit sector, she is an independent film curator specializing in scientific films. Valeria is also on pest-control patrol in the CUP office.

Valeria Mogilevich has worked on Knoxville: Building Communities, The Water Underground, Green Information Center, Tagging the Social Contract, Prison City Comix, Temporary Showroom, People and Buildings, Freedom and Incarceration, Making Policy Public

Damon Rich is an urban designer working at the grisly intersection of design, policy, and the public. His exhibitions use video, sculpture, graphic…

Damon Rich is an urban designer working at the grisly intersection of design, policy, and the public. His exhibitions use video, sculpture, graphics, and photography to investigate the political economy of the built environment. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Storefront for Art and Architecture and SculptureCenter (New York City), the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (Liepzig), and Netherlands Architecture Institute (Rotterdam). In 1997, he founded the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people understand and change the places they live, where he served as Creative Director for 10 years. Damon has taught design at institutions including the Parsons School of Design, Heritage High School, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, and the Queens Library Adult Learning Center. He writes about architecture and politics for publications including the Village Voice, the Nation, Metropolis, and Architecture magazine. Damon has been awarded a New York State Council on the Arts award for his work with adult literacy and architecture, as well as a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony for his work on the history of urban renewal. In 2007, Damon was selected as a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and an Artist-in-Residence at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, where he developed a pedagogical exhibition on architecture, real estate, and finance.

Damon Rich has worked on Public Housing 101, PHTV: What's up with public housing?, Building Codes, Building Codes, Coding Communities, Garbage Problems, Gautreaux v. Urban Renewal, The City without a Ghetto, Urban Renewal Activity Tables, Values & Variety: Shopping on Fulton Street, The Center for Critical Skills, The Subsidized Landscape, The Connection between Abandoned Buildings and Homeless People, Governors Island Points of Interest, Cybercity Walking Tour, Hell's Kitchen South: Developing Strategies, Schoolyard Visions, Detroit Do Your Thing!, However Unspectacular: A New Suburbanism, The Water Underground, Abuse of Power: The SPURA Story, Mind the Gap, Big up, Jamaica!, Spacebombing / Don't mess with this city!, What's Poppin at Fulton Mall?, Code City, Temporary Showroom, Social Security Risk Machine, The Programmable City, Chew On This