August 1, 2011
Two newly appointed tenure-track professors of architecture are joining Cornell University’s Department of Architecture this fall. Assistant Professor Caroline O’Donnell is the first Richard Meier Professor of Architecture, and Jenny E. Sabin is an assistant professor of design and emerging technologies.
O’Donnell, has been a visiting faculty member in the Department of Architecture since 2008 and is editor-in-chief of the Cornell Journal of Architecture. She is the principal of CODA, an experimental design and research studio operating at a range of scales from the urban to the architectural. From 2006 to 2008, O’Donnell was project leader at Eisenman Architects in New York City, where she directed the design teams for several projects, including Hamburg Library and Pompei Santuario Railway Station. She received her bachelor of architecture from the Manchester School of Architecture, England and her master of architecture from Princeton University.
“In Caroline O’Donnell the search committee found someone with accomplishment in architectural design and excellence in studio instruction, who also shows promise of establishing herself as an eminent architect, educator, and scholar,” says Associate Professor Jonathan Ochshorn, who chaired the committee. “O'Donnell has already taken important strides in these areas, achieving recognition in the 2010 Europan 10 Competition; teaching at both Cooper Union and Princeton before coming to Cornell; and writing for numerous architectural publications.”
Established in 2010, the Richard Meier Professorship of Architecture endowment is named in honor of alumnus Richard Meier (B.Arch. ’56), whose commitment to design excellence is a hallmark of Cornell’s architecture program.
As an educator and principal of Jenny Sabin Studio, Sabin’s research, teaching, and design practice focuses on the intersections of architecture, computation, and biology. She is a collaborator on an NSF-funded project employing design computation to develop materials for integration into environmentally responsive building skins. She was a corecipient of an Upjohn research grant administered by the AIA and was recently awarded a Pew Fellowship in Design and Architecture. Her work has been published in A+U, American Journal of Pathology, Science, the New York Times, and Wired Magazine. She has coauthored Meander, Variegating Architecture with Ferda Kolatan. She holds a B.F.A. and B.A. from the University of Washington and an M.Arch. from the University of Pennsylvania.
“Jenny Sabin brings not only unique expertise in emerging technologies to the faculty at Cornell, but embodies the essence of the collaborative spirit that is so important for positioning the department and the college as an engaged colleague within the university as a whole,” says search committee chair Associate Professor Andrea Simitch. “Her work primarily lies at the intersections of architecture and art and of architecture and science. Her visualization of cell structures provides innovative groundwork in developing models for bio-mimetic design strategies and 'informed' form. Similarly her research into digital looms and textiles provides insights and opportunities for courses integrating design tooling and material technologies with advanced fabrication.”
Sabin and O’Donnell will be primarily based in Ithaca and teaching studios starting this fall.
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