Sam Stayn teaching the House Course: Thinking Like an Architect. (Photo courtesy of Sam Stayn)
Designing with the Climate in Mind
By his sophomore year of high school, Sam Stayn knew he wanted a career with purpose — he just didn’t know what form it would take. During the pandemic, Stayn enrolled in a virtual summer program at the Boston Architectural College. It was meant to be an exploratory, short introduction to design. Instead, it was transformative.
“I realized that I needed a career path where creativity, analytical thinking and the act of making things are inseparable,” he says.
That path widened his senior year, thanks to an environmental science elective. Field-based and exploratory, students collected stream data, studied geology and wrote analytical reports projecting environmental change over time. For Stayn, it was a revelation that science, too, could be creative.
“Designing experiments, gathering field data and drawing conclusions mirrored the architectural processes of site analysis, iterative testing and structural imagination,” he explains.
At Duke, he doubled down on that intersection — and his majors — pairing an AAHVS concentration in Architecture with Earth and Climate Sciences. Leveraging Duke’s multidisciplinary flexibility, he has built a specialized technical track that allows him to approach architecture not just as form-making but as ecological intervention.
“My scientific training informs my approach to topography, hydrological flow, materials and environmental resilience in design,” he says. “I’m able to envision buildings and public spaces as active participants in ecological cycles, rather than static objects.”
This semester, he is refining his own thinking about how to synthesize design and data by leading the Trinity House Course: Thinking Like an Architect
We caught up with the rising junior to discuss career ambitions, perspectives on the humanities and the advantages that come with a STEAM course of study.
Do you find your majors to be mutually beneficial?
Absolutely — and the crossover is 100% advantageous. While balancing the two majors can feel like a puzzle, the courses often complement each other. My architecture courses prioritize creativity, visual and cultural analysis and spatial problem-solving. Bringing a creative mindset into science classes allows me to approach problems more imaginatively and collaboratively — not just through numbers but through brainstorming and big-picture thinking.
At the same time, my STEM courses ground my creative work in research, technical precision and real-world data and constraints. Together, they make me a more flexible and thoughtful thinker about architectural resilience. My work is about synthesis: climate data informs my design decisions, and design sharpens how I help empower people to understand and act on the climate science that affects them.
How do you see the relationship between STEM and the arts/humanities in today’s technology-driven world?
While more students are gravitating toward STEM fields, the arts and humanities provide an essential perspective. They teach us how to engage with culture and the human experience in ways that numbers and data alone can’t capture. STEM and the humanities don’t have to compete — they strengthen each other.
As AI automates more technical tasks, the “human” element becomes an even more important skill. AI doesn’t have lived experience, intuition or genuine emotional understanding. While it can generate a professional architectural render, it cannot navigate the nuances of displacing an urban community or capture the intuitive “sense of place” that makes a project culturally sustainable.
As technology reshapes how people work, the things we learn through the humanities — ethical decision-making, storytelling and empathy — will become the most important tools in our toolbox.
You’re halfway through your undergrad. What direction are you leaning toward career-wise?
I am focusing my career on the intersection of architecture, environmental resilience and community impact. For many people, “sustainable design" often means doing less harm. I want my work to go further to meaningfully improve the way people live, connect and share a sense of community.
My earth and climate sciences courses have enabled me to look at projects through a lens where the aesthetics, cultural meaning and site-specific topography are all part of the same puzzle. I’m particularly excited about integrating regenerative materials into thoughtful design solutions, while remaining sensitive to clients’ practical needs and budgets.
Whether I am at a global firm or eventually founding my own practice, I aim to move beyond just “building structures.” My goal is to design practical, compelling spaces that restore both the environment they sit in and the spirit of the people who move through them.
