ISABELLA KREBS

Urban Futurist isabellakrebs.com/work

For BFA Architectural Design and BA Urban Studies student Isabella Krebs, coming to Parsons meant being able to pursue several academic interests simultaneously. “I wanted a truly interdisciplinary degree,” says Krebs, “along with the many opportunities that Parsons—and New York City—provide.”

The opportunities came early for Krebs. It was during her first year at Parsons that she learned how sustainability could be incorporated into her architecture and urban studies programs. “Courses such as Green Roof Ecology and Urban Resilience— taught by professors from the Urban Systems Lab—changed my trajectory,” says Krebs.

This led Krebs to the Healthy Materials Lab, where she became a researcher at the Donghia Healthier Materials Library, helping other students explore alternative, environmentally friendly building materials. She also participated in the Circular Economy & Co-Design summer program at Aalto University in Finland, where she explored ways in which cities can become more equitable and sustainable.

Krebs’ interests at the intersections of architecture, urban design, and sustainability have culminated in her two thesis projects. Her Urban Studies thesis examines urban flooding in Bangkok and the ways vernacular Thai stilt architecture could be adapted to a large, dense urban environment to create more resilient housing for vulnerable residents. “It’s really about the decolonization of architecture in Bangkok,” explains Krebs.

Building off that research, Krebs’ Architectural Design thesis tackles social and climate justice by proposing modular, sustainably built housing for residents of the Khlong Toei settlement in Bangkok that is resistant to flooding but can also be dismantled and reassembled elsewhere, given the need for frequent relocation and rebuilding in a river delta.

These are insights that Krebs hopes to take forward in her career. “Architecture is not just making and not just engineering,” she says. “It needs to take into consideration the well-being of the community and the environment.”

Faculty

NORA KRUG Investigative Illustrator nora-krug.com

“I try to use my work to highlight the problems of the world.” says Nora Krug, associate professor of illustration. For Krug, an award-winning illustrator and teacher, that seems like something of an understatement.

Indeed, the German-born Krug is drawn to “subjects that make me angry,” which many would shy away from. War, tyranny, injustice, and suffering inspire her to unearth important stories of people we might not otherwise come to know. She believes that “illustration should be taken seriously as an art form able to effectively engage political subjects”—a view she communicates to her students at Parsons.

Krug’s most recent focus has been the war in Ukraine. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, she was deeply disturbed by the harrowing events. Krug noticed that personal accounts of the war were rarely present in the news and was determined to depict personal experiences through her craft. She envisioned a visual diary of two real-life acquaintances—a Russian artist and a Ukrainian journalist. She pitched the idea, and the Los Angeles Times and several European newspapers eagerly agreed to run it.

It wasn't Krug's goal to portray Russians as victims, equate the experiences of Russians and Ukrainians, or facilitate reconciliation. Instead, she sought to highlight the complex, far-reaching effects of war on people by presenting two sharply contrasting perspectives on the war—those of a Ukrainian and of a Russian. She interviewed the people she calls her “protagonists” by text message and conducted additional research as the war unfolded.

Over the course of the year, Krug delivered weekly installments of the visual diary to the newspaper. The series will be released in book form by Ten Speed Press in fall 2023. Titled Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia, the project was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won the 2023 Overseas Press Club competition’s Runner-Up citation in the Cartooning category.

Krug’s previous books were no less ambitious. Her visual memoir, Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, is a heartfelt examination of World War II and her own family history. It was included on the New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2018 list and won praise from The Guardian, NPR, and TIME magazine. Belonging also received several awards, including the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2019 Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize. Krug’s visual storytelling also animates On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, a graphic edition of historian Timothy Snyder’s best-selling book Lessons for Resistance Against Totalitarian Regimes.

Although Krug is as much a writer as an artist, she compares her work to documentary filmmaking, a subject she discovered at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and studied at the Berlin University of the Arts before receiving a Fulbright to pursue an MFA in Illustration at the School of Visual Arts.

“I see text and image as a visual unit,” says Krug, adding that she’s had the good luck to work with art directors who have given her the freedom to design her own books and covers. Krug doesn’t keep regular sketchbooks; instead, she immerses herself in her projects, using research as “the backbone” of her visual narratives.

Working by hand, Krug scans drawings and paintings into a computer and uses Photoshop when needed. In her own work and in critiquing work by her students, Krug is interested less in technique or medium than in the expression of an idea or emotion. Her perspective reflects the influence of German Expressionism, which she appreciates for its “rawness, immediacy, and subject matter.”

Krug has been teaching illustration at Parsons as a full-time faculty member for 16 years and is currently codirecting the program. She encourages her students to find their own voice, just as she has found hers. “Every student comes to class with a different set of experiences,” Krug says. “I want to be sensitive to the stories they want to tell.”