Jeffrey S. Nesbit is an architect, urbanist, and founding director of the research group Grounding Design.
His experience spanning over a decade includes leading design teams for public architecture and large-scale urban projects, along with managing sponsored design research projects for city governments, local institutions, and NGOs. Nesbit’s research focuses on processes of urbanization, infrastructure, and the evolution of "technical lands." His current research projects explore the architecture and infrastructure of planetary ports, the American rocket launch complex, and distant sites at the ends of the world.
Nesbit has published widely in various journals and book chapters, is the author of Ground Control: A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA’s Space Complex (Routledge, 2025), and is editor of several books, including Constructing Invisibility (ORO, 2025), Technical Lands: A Critical Primer (Jovis, 2023), Nature of Enclosure (Actar, 2022), Rio de Janeiro: Urban Expansion and Environment (Routledge, 2019), Chasing the City: Models for Extra-Urban Investigations (Routledge, 2018), and is host and producer of three podcasts series. He is currently an associate professor and interim director of graduate studies in the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, and lecturer in the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Nesbit has previously taught at multiple institutions, including Harvard University, Northeastern University, University of North Carolina Charlotte, University of New Mexico, and Texas Tech University.
Doctor of Design, Harvard University, 2020
Master of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, 2009
Bachelor of Science in Architecture, Texas Tech University, 2006
Selected Awards
Institute for Public Architecture, Fall Fellow Residency, 2020.
“Soil for Space: A Critical History of Earthmoving at Cape Canaveral,” 2019 Penny White Project Fund. Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Department of Landscape Architecture.
“Aquatic Resiliency,” New York City Aquarium and Public Space Competition, ArchOutLoud. Queens, NY, 2016, finalist.
Texas Tech Alumni Association Barnie E. Rushing Outstanding Researcher Award, 2015.
ACSA Open Cities, Design and Research Merit Award, 2014.
Selected Works
César Lopez and Jeffrey S. Nesbit (2025) Exclusions, Edges, and Ecologies: An Architecture… Barcelona/New York: Actar Publishers.
(in contract, forthcoming)
Jeffrey S. Nesbit, ed. (2025) Constructing Invisibility: Infrastructure, Militarization, and the Extreme Environment. Novato, CA: ORO Publishers.
Jeffrey S. Nesbit (2024) Ground Control: A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA’s Space Complex. New York: Routledge.
Jeffrey S. Nesbit and Charles Waldheim, eds. (2023) Technical Lands: A Critical Primer. Berlin: Jovis Verlag.
Jeffrey S. Nesbit, ed. (2022) Nature of Enclosure. Barcelona/New York: Actar Publisers.
José Gámez, Zhongjie Lin, and Jeffrey S. Nesbit, eds. (2020) Rio de Janeiro: Urban Expansion and Environment. New York: Routledge.
Jeffrey S. Nesbit and Guy Trangoš, eds. (2019) New Geographies 11: Extraterrestrial. Cambridge and Barcelona: Harvard Graduate School of Design and Actar Publishers.
Joshua Nason and Jeffrey S. Nesbit, eds. (2019) Chasing the City: Models for Extra-Urban Investigations. New York: Routledge.