Robert Kraus is an artist, architect, and furniture designer and maker who lives with his wife Philippa in Schoharie County in New York's Hudson River Valley. 


An abstract painter educated at Yale, he moved to New York City in 1976 to attend the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He exhibited paintings in New York City galleries including E.S. Van Damm during the 1980s and 1990s.  He enrolled at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture (GSAPP) Summer Studio in 2000, where he was persuaded by his instructor (and colleague at Parsons School of Art and Design) Jonathon Knowles to apply for admission to Columbia's M.Arch Program, from which he graduated in 2004.


He worked in architecture offices in New York City for 6 years, including three years in the office of 2014 Pritzker Prize winner Shigeru Ban. He resumed painting in 2010 and moved Upstate full-time in 2011 in order to build a house that he designed with Robert Marino for himself and his family.

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