Sean Flynn                                                                          CV
Biography


Sean Flynn, a senior core staff member with over 20 years of professional experience, has been with Alspector Architecture since 2005 and is currently leading our ongoing renovations of New York University’s Bobst Library. Previously he was our project manager for the Digital Learning Center at Utah Valley University Orem, Utah; the New Bobst Classrooms project and the Feasibility Study for The Town School in New York.  Prior to joining Alspector he spent ten years at Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects; five years at The Liebman Melting Partnership, Architects & Planners; and four years with other New York City firms and on his own work.

At Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Mr. Flynn worked primarily on private and public institutional projects.  This included project architect or Senior Associate-in-Charge roles on the Mid-Manhattan Library of the New York Public Library; the Library for Information, Technology and Education at Ferris State University in Michigan; Baker Library at the Harvard Business School, the Akron-Summit County Public Library in Akron, Ohio, and Whig Hall at Princeton University.  He had leadership roles for the Science, Industry and Business Library of the NYPL, the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York; Mt. Pleasant-Blythedale School in Valhalla, NY; and support rolls for CUNY’s Hostos Community College in the Bronx and the George Bello Center at Bryant University in Rhode Island.  Mr. Flynn also worked on the firm’s renowned private house commissions and on commercial projects, including high-rise mixed-use developments in Singapore.

At the Liebman Melting Partnership Mr. Flynn concentrated on multi-family housing and large scale urban mixed-use developments in the United States; the adaptive reuse of historic structures in the US and Poland; and the design of high-rise mixed-use projects in Russia and the Caribbean.  In addition to architectural design and urban planning tasks he had a major role in firm management, concentrating on contracts, human resources, finances, and marketing.  In his own practice he has completed numerous residential renovations and additions in New York and its suburbs, as well as commercial and institutional interiors and planning studies.  Mr. Flynn has wide experience with fast-track, multiple bid and public contract work, including projects built by the Dormitory Authority of NY (DASNY,) the NY State University Construction Fund (SUCF,) the Michigan Department of Management and Budget (DMB,) and the Utah Department of Facilities Construction and Management (DFCM); and projects subject to review and approval by the NY State Education Department, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, and the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.

A lifelong New Yorker and graduate of the High School of Music & Art, Mr. Flynn received a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from The Cooper Union School of Art where he studied with Robert Breer, Hans Haacke, Martha Rosler, Dore Ashton and Rudy DeHarak.  While a full-time art student he completed, as electives, the first-year course sequence in Cooper’s architecture school, including studio with Raimund Abraham.  An example of his studio work at Cooper appears in The Education of an Architect (Rizzoli, NY. 1988).   He received a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he studied with Kenneth Frampton, José Oubrerie, Claus Herdeg, Mary McCloud, Beatriz Colomina, and Peggy Deamer.  At Columbia he was elected co-editor of Précis, the student journal; his studio work was published in Précis 6, 1987.  Mr. Flynn is co-editor of Architecture and Body (Rizzoli, NY. 1989) a book of theoretical essay’s on architecture and the human body. 

Mr. Flynn serves on the board of Artist as Citizen, a not-for-profit organization that encourages students in creative fields towards pragmatic social engagement with issues that directly impact American society and their own lives.  In 1998 he organized a group of neighbors and colleagues into a design collective, Life in Hell.  They were invited to submit a design study for Hell’s Kitchen South, the last large underdeveloped area of lower Manhattan.  Their work was exhibited at Storefront for Art and Architecture in 1999, later published in Hell’s Kitchen South: Developing Strategies (Design Trust for Public Space, NY.  2002).  Mr. Flynn has been a presenter at Society of College and University Planners (SCUP) regional conferences and a guest critic for undergraduate and graduate architecture studios at the New York Institute of Technology, the City College of New York, Barnard College, and Columbia University.