Nina is the founding principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture and Design, a multidisciplinary design studio that values placemaking as a way to transform relationships between people and the built environment. Nina’s work explores the continuum between art and architecture.  Working at the scale of the human body; individually or collectively, in the home or on the street, responding to how we use space in our everyday lives.

Studio Cooke John’s Shadow of A Face, the new Harriet Tubman Monument in Newark, NJ was unveiled in March 2023.  The studio was awarded a 2021 AIA Merit Award for the public art installation, Point of Action, commissioned for the Flatiron public plazas in 2020 and currently on view at the Wassaic Project.  Nina was named the AIANY New Perspectives honoree in 2024 and a 2022 United States Artists Fellow.  Her work has also been featured in Architectural Record, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Dwell, NBC’s Open House, and PBS NewsHour Weekend among other publications and news outlets.

Nina began her professional career working on the designs of cultural institutions with Voorsanger and Associates and Polshek Partnership (now Ennead) before moving on to retail design, corporate offices, custom residential construction and, most recently, public art.  She is licensed to practice architecture in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Nina earned her Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University and MSAAD from Columbia University.  She has been a design educator for 20 years teaching at NYIT, Syracuse University, Parsons School of Design and currently at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.