Abigail Zola

Abigail Zola earned her BFA in Interior Architecture from The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at The George Washington University, where she received the Juror's Choice Award for her capstone project. She went on to complete her Master of Architecture with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). At RISD, Abigail worked at the Arts and Language Center, helping students refine their portfolios through layout design, visual hierarchy, and clear project descriptions. Her expertise in portfolio presentation and attention to detail make her an invaluable guide for students at this crucial stage of their creative development.

Abigail was awarded the Fred and Maria Devinki Memorial Digital Humanities Fellowship for her research project, “Uncovering Emotional Contamination: Redefining the Process of Site-Specific Analysis.” Her master’s thesis explored the concept of "emotional contamination"—the residual feelings associated with spaces where negative or tragic events have occurred, whether personally, historically, or politically. Her work examined how emotional contamination affects people’s associations with a place and their willingness to spend time there. Abigail's project established design principles that acknowledge the lifespan of a site, proposing an urban system for addressing this concept, rather than limiting it to individual architectural artifacts. Her research included case studies in Berlin, analyzing how political and economic factors influence site interventions and how these spaces reshape our understanding of architecture's role in emotional contamination and memorialization.

Currently, Abigail works as a freelance architectural designer in New York City.