AAP Building the Future

Architecture at 150 | Art at 100 

Dean J. Meejin Yoon, Architecture Chair Caroline O'Donnell, and Art Chair Paul Ramírez Jonas invite all AAP faculty, staff, and students to a public discussion on the future of architecture and art education at AAP, with additional commentary by CRP Chair Sophie Oldfield. Immediately following the lecture join us for a college-wide BBQ on Sibley Beach! 

J. Meejin Yoon

J. Meejin Yoon, AIA FAAR, is the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean at the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP) at Cornell University and cofounder of Höweler + Yoon, an award-winning design studio engaged in projects across the U.S. and around the world. An architect, designer, and educator, Yoon is committed to advancing pedagogy, research, and practice to expand new knowledge and imaginaries across fields and disciplines, and to bringing deep expertise to the urgent environmental and social challenges facing our cities and communities. At AAP, she is founding director of the Design Across Scales Lab, a creative think tank and platform for multi-scalar design research. Yoon's own research examines intersections between architecture, urbanism, technology, and the public realm, and her professional projects and creative work include cultural buildings, public spaces, and memorials. Recently built projects include the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia, Sky Courts Exhibition Hall in Chengdu, China, and the Collier Memorial and MIT Museum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yoon's work has been exhibited in the U.S. and internationally at venues such as at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, and the Venice Biennale, among others. Yoon received a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University, and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Before returning to Cornell in 2019, Yoon served as head of the Department of Architecture at MIT from 2014–2018, and as a faculty member for 17 years prior. In 2016, Yoon received the ACADIA Teaching Award of Excellence, and the Irwin Sizer Award for Most Significant Improvement to MIT Education in 2013. In 2021, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Caroline O'Donnell

Caroline O'Donnell is the Edgar A. Tafel Professor of Architecture, and Chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell University. Her research and teaching areas are in ecological and contextual design, as well as in nonlinear materiality. She is a licensed architect and sole principal of CODA, and winner of MoMA/PS1's Young Architects Program in 2013 with the project Party Wall, which used skateboard offcuts and leftover steel. See co-da.co Opens an external link for more information. O'Donnell was the editor of the Cornell Journal of Architecture issues 8–10 and founding editor of Pidgin magazine. Her first book, Niche Tactics: Generative Relationships between Architecture and Site, was published by Routledge in April 2015. O'Donnell has previously taught at Harvard GSD and at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. From Northern Ireland, she received her B.Arch. (specialization in bioclimatics) from the Manchester School of Architecture, England; and her M.Arch.II from Princeton University.

Paul Ramírez Jonas

Paul Ramírez Jonas is a Brooklyn–based practicing artist and educator whose work has been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Selected solo exhibitions include Museo Jumex, Mexico City; The New Museum, New York City; Pinacoteca do Estado, Sao Paulo, Brazil; The Aldrich Contemporary Museum, Connecticut; The Blanton Museum, Texas; a survey at Ikon Gallery (U.K.) and Cornerhouse (U.K.) in 2004, and a 25-year survey at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston in 2017. Selected group exhibitions at P.S.1; the Brooklyn Museum; The Whitechapel (UK); Irish Museum of Modern Art (Ireland); and Kunsthaus Zurich. He participated in the 1st Johannesburg Biennale; 1st Seoul Biennial; 6th Shanghai Biennial; 28th Sao Paulo Biennial; 53rd Venice Biennial and 7th and 10th Bienal do Mercosul. His projects Key to the City (2010) and Public Trust (2016) were presented by Creative Time in cooperation with the City of New York, and by Now & There in Boston, respectively.

Before coming to Cornell, Ramírez Jonas was an Associate Professor of Art at Hunter College in Brooklyn, New York, where he taught for nearly 15 years. Ramírez Jonas earned a B.A. from Brown University (1987 )and an M.F.A. in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (1989). He is represented by the Galeria Nara Roesler in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and New York.

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