David Ottavio

Program-Driven Design

David is highly adept at developing program-focused buildings, with a particular emphasis on undergraduate and graduate professional programs, including law schools for the City University of New York and the University of Kentucky and business schools for the Earl G. Graves School of Business & Management at Morgan State University, the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. David has helped KPF drive the conversation on programming and planning for new pedagogies, bringing forward new ideas for testing and review and carefully implementing them through design and construction.

Stephen M. Ross School of Business

Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A.

J. David Rosenberg College of Law Building

Lexington, KY, U.S.A.

Ann McIlrath Drake Executive Center at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management

Evanston, IL, U.S.A.

State-of-the-Art Environments

David advocates for the seamless integration of technology and architecture to create state-of-the-art learning and study environments, enabling maximum program flexibility. David was the project manager of NYU Shanghai, a new campus that breaks down academic silos through the innovative stacking of program and made major contributions to HKUST(GZ), a living lab academic campus with high sustainability targets.

NYU Shanghai

Shanghai, China

The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (Guangzhou)

Guangzhou, China

W.P Carey School of Business McCord Hall

Tempe, AZ, U.S.A.

Industry Leadership

An expert in the design of educational spaces, David has served as a Proposal Reviewer for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) and has been a panelist for USG’s Acoustics Matters Series, “Sound Design in Learning Spaces.”