Lindsey Wikstrom
Associate Professor Adjunct
Lindsey Wikstrom is an architect, author, and professor, known for advancing regenerative approaches to design with a focus on material innovation, biodiversity, and non-extractive processes. As the Founding Principal of Mattaforma, she leads the design of all projects big and small, public and private.
Lindsey is the author of Designing the Forest and Other Mass Timber Futures (Routledge, 2023), a book that situates architecture within living forest systems and argues for more just and ecological building practices. She has been invited to contribute to notable publications, has moderated conversations with global leaders, and is a frequent public speaker including for Prada Possible Conversations, MoMA, conferences, universities, and others.
Lindsey has led graduate-level architecture studios at Columbia GSAPP, Yale, Cornell, and Syracuse, and holds a Master of Architecture from Columbia University where she was awarded the McKim Prize and Avery 6 Prize. She is the winner of 2025 New Practices New York Prize and among the World Architect Festival’s Top 40 Under 40.
Through both her studio and her scholarship, Lindsey advances the idea that architecture can be a choreography of care: designing not only for buildings, but for the interconnected flourishing of communities, landscapes, and planetary systems.
Lindsey's CV is available here.
Projects
The Nursery at Public Records
The Nursery at Public Records
Summer event space and over winter greenhouse
As a flexible indoor-outdoor space that supports the brilliant offerings of Public Records year‑round, night and day, The Nursery has grown into a beloved part of the Brooklyn experience. In summer, it hosts atmospheric gatherings. In winter, it transforms into a passively heated greenhouse, protecting the venue’s extensive plant collection.
It has been the backdrop to weddings, craft workshops, and private celebrations. Acoustically tuned courtyard walls double as seating and planters, repurposed shipping containers double as amenity and storage, and timber pavilions shelter, orient, and celebrate sunlight. The materials are lightweight, durable, and off-the-shelf, designed to be dismantled, reused, and recycled, aligning with Public Record's zero‑waste philosophy.
Monospace
Monospace
Dinner series music venue pop up at historic stove factory off a rail spur
Monospace is envisioned as a dynamic extension of Stove Works, an established arts center housed in a historic factory in Chattanooga’s Southside. This new space will merge immersive sound, hospitality, and curated experiences into a seamless environment that fosters community connection and creative expression. Designed for fluid transitions between vibrant celebration, restorative pause, and thoughtful reflection, Monospace will host a wide spectrum of programs, making it a vital cultural node for the city.
Dear Future
Dear Future
An exhibition designed as a time capsule of hope and imagination
Dear Future is a traveling exhibition fund raiser for Spence Chapin's Granny caregiver program for Chiquitines Children’s Home in Cali, Colombia. Working closely with local Colombian artists, the exhibition features crafted unique masks and costumes made by the children that express their personalities, stories, and aspirations. Alongside these visual creations, each child wrote a letter to their future self, imagining the lives they might one day lead and the places they might see. The display structures were engineered to be easily assembled and disassembled, lightweight for transport, and visually simple so that the children’s work remained the focal point.
Neurodivergent Classrooms
Neurodivergent Classrooms
Healthy materials and thoughtful design for neuro-inclusive educational space
Neurodivergent Classrooms is a series of purpose-built Adaptive Daily Living (ADL) and Occupational Therapy (OT) spaces in a public high school in Queens, NY. The project welcomes and celebrates the diversity of neurological profiles, respecting the many ways people think, learn, and process information.
Parkview Mountain House
Parkview Mountain House
Creative stay nestled in rocky mountain
Perched in the wooded slopes of Summit Park, Parkview Mountain House is a three-story creative retreat designed to foster connections with nature for reflective respite. Its slender, vertical form rises through the trees, extending window boxes that create intimacy with neighboring firs. Material and color choices root the hospitality space in its Utah context. Bathrooms echo the rich red earth while knotty cedar siding narrates a story of the forest, growth, and rebirth. The result is a getaway that is both immersive and grounded, nestled and protected from the elements.
Rancho Almasomos
Rancho Almasomos
Biodynamic-farm-to-table hospitality offering in the high desert
The site strategy for Rancho Almasomos lays the foundation for a regenerative hospitality and agricultural community in Arizona’s Verde Valley, where six distinct biotic communities converge to create exceptional biodiversity and resilience. On 131 acres along Spring Creek, the plan integrates biodynamic farming, guest accommodations, wellness facilities, and event venues into a living system that strengthens both ecological and human communities.
