Matthew Cook

About Matthew

Matthew David Cook  is an American architect currently practicing at Hart Howerton Architects in New York City. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s five year Bachelor of Architecture program. After a childhood spent drawing the fantastic buildings of his hometown of Chicago, he chose to study architecture and urban design in order to work creatively with and for others on a daily basis. While Matthew loves the aesthetic puzzle of every design, it is the human element of architecture that makes the profession so appealing for him. His work has allowed him to travel often, and from Rome to Bali, from Cuba to the American South, he is most moved by traditional architecture and the story it tells about people and their histories. ​ After completing his B. Arch. at Notre Dame, Matthew’s work focused on the architecture of the Asia Pacific region, and this regional interest yielded two long-term work experiences abroad. Following graduation, he spent fourteen months working at IBUKU, a bespoke bamboo design-build firm in Bali, Indonesia as one of seventeen Americans selected for the 2014 – 2015 Luce Scholars Program. Matthew’s time at IBUKU had a profound impact on his understanding of what it means to build sustainably and in a way that engages local tradition. He played an integral role in the design of several IBUKU projects, including a competition entry for a Baha’i worship complex on the Pacific island of Vanuatu, a farmstand for the Green School in Bali, and a Balinese restaurant in Hong Kong. During his Luce year, Matthew was also responsible for the firm’s intern hiring and coordination.
He then spent two years at Robert A.M. Stern Architects in New York City, working on and learning more about the fascinating process of residential development in China. Eventually, a desire to investigate by going to the source brought Matthew to Beijing, where he spent a year working alongside the firm’s partners as a project architect at Zephyr Architects ( 这方建筑师事务所) in Haidian. ​ Outside of the office, Matthew enjoys cooking for friends, doodling, and playing piano (well) and guitar (poorly). When he’s sufficiently caffeinated, he can mumble his way through an office environment in French, Italian, and Indonesian. His Chinese, on the other hand, is still mostly a “听不懂” situation.    Matthew is a licensed architect in his home state of Illinois. He hopes that by looking to the past to generate design solutions for the future, his work will bring renewed awareness to the importance of tradition in architecture.