Matthew Okazaki

Matthew Akira Okazaki (b. Oakland, California) is an artist, designer, and educator based out of Boston, Massachusetts. His sculpture, mixed-media, and architectural work centers around a creative practice of “making do.” Through an emphasis on place-knowing, archival research, and the exploration of material and construction techniques, Okazaki embraces the ordinary and readily available in the hopes of uncovering and constructing new meanings and collective modes of understanding in the spaces we inhabit. 

His writing and work has been published in The Boston Art Review and the Journal of Architectural Education, and he has participated in exhibitions at the Pao Arts Center, Gallery 263, Unbound Visual Arts, and Galatea Fine Art. He was a 2023 Densho Artist-in-Residence, an organization that aims to tell the history of Japanese-Americans incarcerated during World War II. Most recently, Okazaki was selected to create a seasonal public art installation for the City of Cambridge’s 2024 Shade is Social Justice and Climate Resiliency initiative.

Okazaki is the founder of the architecture practice Field Office LLC, and a principal at Architecture for Public Benefit, a benefit corporation providing design services for non-profit and mission-driven organizations in Greater Boston. Recent collaborators include Boston Public Library, the City of Cambridge, YouthBuild Boston, Bridges Homeward, and Just-A-Start.

Okazaki is a Professor of the Practice in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Tufts University. He holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a B.S in Applied Mathematics from UCLA.