Caroline O'Donnell: Getting It — An Architecture of Language, Signs & Jokes

Edgar A. Tafel Architecture Lecture Series

Abstract

Caroline O'Donnell, Edgar A. Tafel Professor of Architecture and former chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell, will speak about what (architecturally) gets her up in the morning and what continues to bring joy in the practice of architecture while addressing serious global concerns. Exploring the architecture of signs and joke theory, O'Donnell will explore what it is to make and comprehend meaningful architecture, beginning with several precedents and leading into her own built and unbuilt work. Equipped with the tools of making architecture that communicates, O'Donnell will challenge us all to bring important thinking to the world through writing and reading the language of architecture.

Biography

Caroline O'Donnell is the Edgar A. Tafel Professor of Architecture and former Chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell University. Her research and teaching areas are in ecological design and theory.

She is a licensed architect, sole principal of CODA, and winner of MoMA/PS1's Young Architects Program in 2013 with the project Party Wall. Recent projects include an inclusive addition to the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Valentine Student Housing, and REACH Supportive Housing in Ithaca, New York.

O'Donnell also leads the Ecological Action Lab, which experiments with nose-to-tail practices, novel materials, and the reimagining of the function of objects. Recent projects include Friendship WC, a water and plastic bottle chandelier for the 2022 Tallinn Biennial, and Primitive Hut and Evitim, two pavilions at Art Omi, New York, in collaboration with OMG using biodegradable, living, and leftover materials.

O'Donnell was the editor of the Cornell Journal of Architecture issues 8–10 and the founding editor of Pidgin magazine. Publications include Niche Tactics: Generative Relationships between Architecture and Site, Routledge (2015), This Is Not A Wall, Ed. Caroline O'Donnell and Steven Chodoriwsky, AAP/Actar, (2017), The Architecture of Waste: Design for a Circular Economy: Ed. Caroline O'Donnell and Dillon Pranger, Routledge (2019), and Werewolf: The Architecture of Lunacy, Shapeshifting, and Material Metamorphosis, Caroline O'Donnell and José Ibarra, AR+D/ORO Publications (2022).

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 bioclimatic) From the Manchester School of Architecture, England, where she won the Heywood Medal and her M.Arch.II from Princeton University, where she was the recipient of the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize.