Adam Miller is a designer and teacher, and director of Pneu Stars Design Group. Prior to joining UC Berkeley as a lecturer, Adam was the Muschenheim Fellow at University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning (2021–2023) and from 2019 to 2021 Adam was the two-time recipient of the Race & Gender in the Built Environment Fellowship at UT Austin’s School of Architecture.
Adam is founder and director of Pneu Stars, a collaborative design group that produces stage designs and installations since 2014. Pneu Stars has design-built numerous large-scale installations for music festivals in Oakland, working with clients including John Waters, Iggy Pop, Devo, and more.
Adam’s research, writing, and installation practices investigate the relationship between taste, power, and identity through the lens of the queer body with applications to architecture. Adam’s interests lie in renegotiating the legacies of Modern architecture and its taste culture by using queer theory, feminist theory, biopolitics, and aesthetics to develop design that takes marginalized perspectives into account. Adam is interested in the reflexive interaction between how the built environment shapes our visions of ourselves, and how through design we engender the environment with our own identities and value systems.
Adam holds an MArch from UC Berkeley, and BAs from Cornell University. Adam has taught architecture studios and theory at University of Michigan and UT Austin, and he has been an invited critic at various institutions.
ARCH 100A Fundamentals of Architectural Design
ARCH 100B Fundamentals of Architectural Design
ARCH 100C Architectural Design III
ARCH 100D Architectural Design IV
Essay. “Sticky Intimacy.” Disc Journal, Issue 2. An architecture journal at Harvard GSD. Publish date: Jan. 16, 2023.
Invited Lecture. “Queer Remainders.” Invited by Remus Macovei, part of Queer Space Seminar. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, SARUP. Dec 2, 2022.
Invited Lecture. “Four Cones: Under Construction.” part of DID, invited by Angelica Lorenzi. SCI-Arc. June 29, 2022. Open to the public.
Invited Lecture. “Excessive Tools”. “Inside/Outside,” doctoral colloquium at University of Michigan, College of Arch. & Urban Planning. Apr 18, 2022.
Invited Lecture. “The Content of Taste.” part of The Lexicon of Everyday Futures, by Betsy Clifton. Bard Architecture. Feb 16, 2022. Open to the public.
Interview. “Q&A with Adam Miller”. Headlines. UT Austin, School of Architecture. June 22, 2021.
Interview. “Materials and Taste”. The Materials Lab. UT Austin, School of Architecture. Published on Instagram: @materials_lab. April 22, 2021.
Exhibition Review. “The Politics of the Good”.
Invited Panel Participant. “Queer Space”. COA Dialogues. Texas Tech University, College of Architecture. April 2021.
Panel Discussion. Interviewer & co-organizer. “Cruising Modernity”. Dialogue with artist Luiz Roque, part of “República”. Visual Arts Center, Feb-Mar 2021.
Conference Paper. Panel Discussion, forthcoming published transcript. “The Politics of Taste”. Projecting Fellows Conference, UVA School of Architecture. Jan. 12, 2021
Essay. “Bad Memory, Bad Taste: Revolting Archives”, 45 Library Exhibition, eds. A. Campbell, I. Siddiqui, J. Cezzar, B. Griffiths. Nov 2020.
Interviewed and quoted as part of an article on Postmodern renovations. See: Jessie Temple, “Official Complexity”, Texas Architect Magazine: Nov/Dec 2020.
Essay. “On Beauty”, ISSUE XVI: 44-48. University of Texas at Austin. Discussion with Kevin Alter. Apr 2020.
Lecture. “Not Beautiful: Queer Monumentality” Presentation of research on taste, style, gender, and othering at the Center for American Architecture and Design. Apr 2020.
Symposium. Moderator, co-organizer. “Moving Towards Gender Equity in Architecture”. Panelists: Grace La, Shelby Doyle, Mabel O’Wilson. Feb, 2020.
Editor in Chief and co-author. Room One Thousand, Issue 5: Timeless. University of California, Berkeley, CED. April 2017. 345 pgs. (ISSN: 2328-4161 Print)
Essay. Co-author. “Vibrance Matters”. Interview with Adam Nathaniel Furman conducted by Alex Spatzier and me. RM 1000: 5, 2017. pp 225-236.
Essay. Co-author with Alex Spatzier. “Introduction”. RM 1000: 5, 2017. pp 3-6
Essay. “Saturated FAT: Replete Image in Architecture”. Room One Thousand, Issue 4: Expertise. UC Berkeley. (57-70). April 2016.
