Charles Hickox, associate
Charles Hickox has worked in art and architecture for ten years. Raised by architects inclined to artistic deviations, he was drawn to a zone of hybridized artistic and architectural impulses. He has extensive experience with fabrication and assembly on scales ranging from domestic to infrastructural; from hand-hewn furniture and house-building, to ornament and enormous steel sculptures.
Charles’ interest in architecture began in Boston, where he was impressed by the aristocratic pomp of Commonwealth Avenue and the ancient alleyways of the North End. For him, the architecture was transmitting communications akin to language, acting as a silent proxy for ideas beyond the limits of words. In moments on the elevated subway, he witnessed the city as a procession of simultaneous dioramas revealing a framework by which we all live individually and at once. Years later, on an island pasture in Maine, he observed layers of intricate plant structures and hustles of bugs as they went about their work. It was as if there was another city operating antithetically to those he had known. Rather than “individually at once” it was “always everything.” If architecture could embody a language for cities, perhaps it could do the same for the human/nature interface. He started at the Yale School of Architecture the next fall.
Upon receiving his A.B. from Brown University in 2008, Charles worked as an artistic designer under artists Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel and built public art endeavors at the University of Colorado, University of Florida, and the Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey. He received his M. Arch from the Yale School of Architecture in 2014. At Yale, Charles was teaching fellow for legendary architectural ornamenter Kent Bloomer and assisted in the design of Bloomer's ornamental expansion of the New York Avenue Bridge in Washington DC. Also at Yale, Charles was a member of the XS Collaborative art group, developing and installing atmospheric surreal pop-up environments in New Haven's abandoned storefronts. He completed his advanced studios under professors Greg Lynn of Greg Lynn Form, Patrick Bellew of Atelier 10, and Andy Bow of Foster + Partners. His projects in these studios were published in the journal Retrospecta. Prior to joining Pirie Associates, Charles worked as a designer at Luckey Climbers, a firm specializing in exuberant climbing sculptures for children.
