Emily Fischer was born and raised in rural Wisconsin. She received her Masters Degree in Architecture from the University of Michigan in 2005, where she was awarded the Marian Sarah Parker Award for outstanding achievement by a female student.  Since moving to New York City, Emily worked at L.E.FT, MADE, JPDA, and a host of other four-letter words and architectural acronyms. Her current efforts have been invested in developing a professional career as an architect while maintaining connections to academic research and artistic practice. 

Her thesis project titled the Haptic Theater of Cruelty was a recipient of an inaugural GROCS Grant through the University of Michigan's Digital Media Commons. The HToC was featured in the exhibition "4/77" at the Taubman College Gallery; the project was also featured in "Volume 10: On Decoration" in the architecture journal 306090. The SoftMaps quilt project began in 2002 as an academic experiment in tactile way-finding; the quilts were inspired by Emily’s mother, Peggy, who had begun losing her eyesight from complications of glaucoma. 

Read more about Emily and Haptic Lab in the following features:

Design Sponge, Architectural Digest, Archinect, Tested, American Craft Council, Sweet