Understanding architectural practice and pedagogy is one thing; learning how to merge them together and challenge its idiosyncrasies is another. A name often associated with playful obscurity, Jennifer Bonner is a powerful force in the academic and practicing world of architecture. The Huntsville, Alabama native often thanks the city of Las Vegas for her interest in pursuing architecture, but owes much of her highly specific design aesthetic to her experience challenging design systems. Pulling influence and application from ordinary things outside of architecture, Bonner learned to embrace the every day in order to understand any object or task can be represented in architecture.
Pushing herself, her students, and the profession, Bonner continually finds ways to take risks and find new opportunities for discourse and disruption through playfulness and architectural representation. This week Archinect chats with Jennifer Bonner for an in-depth interview discussing the power of alternative teaching methods, provoking pedagogy, her role at Harvard GSD, and why architecture is painfully difficult at times.
What originally motivated you to study architecture?
I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and the summer before deciding what to study in college my father said to me "You know, what about architecture?" I never heard the word before and my response to him was “what’s that?” In Huntsville we had these two public buildings that I spent most of my time in. It was either the civic center or the mall. There were really no examples of architecture in my world growing up.
My first architectural experience was when I visited family in Las Vegas, and the first architecture book that I was exposed to was Learning from Las Vegas. At the same time, my exposure to that city experience was during late 90's. I feel really lucky this was my way into architecture. It’s kind of a weird entry because it wasn’t from Frank Lloyd Wright or these other architects. It wasn't the modernists that inspired me, it was Vegas.
My first architectural experience was when I visited family in Las Vegas, and the first architecture book that I was exposed to was Learning from Las Vegas [...] I feel really lucky this was my way into architecture.
Did you have any architecture role models growing up?
Not until after starting college did I have any influential role models. My second year at Auburn University, I had a professor, Rebecca O’Neal Dagg, who was a recent graduate of the GSD. Her first teaching job right out of graduate school was at Auburn, and she is still teaching there today. She was my first experience with female faculty, and she blew me away. In my head, I was thinking, “whoa, I want to be like her.”
The studio that she set up for us was very unique. The focus was to design a post office in a local parking lot in town. She had us watching Edward Scissorhands, and reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis (laughs). It felt very wild compared to the other educational experiences in Auburn; she was a major influence for me.
What prompted you to start your own practice and how did the name MALL come about?
When I started in 2009, I was thinking about what the name was going to be. I was mulling over this for years. The summer I moved to Cambridge to teach at the GSD, my daughter was only 7 months old. Essentially I was a new mom with the same practice but a new position in life. I came up with MALL because it could stand for any set of words that I could spin together since it's an acronym. It's a response to what happens in culture. In America, we turn straight to shorthand and use acronyms immediately. Also, as I mentioned growing up, I spent a lot of time in malls, so the name eventually came together. But I also reference my own name, Jennifer Bonner, because I don't want to be lost in the world wide web. I think for female practitioners, our full names are important and should be recognized.
Do you have a favorite project? Completed or in progress.
Yes! That's an easy question. Haus Gables. I'm still on a high from the construction process since it finished this past December. It's my very first built work. It was a completely liberating experience to be able to build after a decade of doing biennials, and galleries, and public art callings, so I'm really excited about it.
It was my first chance to take work from my 2014 gallery project and see it come to life. The context of the exhibition was called Domestic Hats, where I made these large roof models that looked at ordinary roof types in Atlanta. The idea was to take that highly conceptual work and transform it. That's what Haus Gables is essentially – I took one of those models from the gallery project, fleshed it out into the real world, and built it.
There's this amazing architectural photographer, Tim Hursley, who captured a shot of the house from a drone. He lit the exterior of the house with lights with the skyline in the background. The house sits in the context of the neighborhood in Atlanta, and it's just great. If you squint your eyes, it looks like one of those models from Domestic Hats. I'm really pleased with the translation of highly conceptualized work on repetition, type, and form, and then launching that into the real world at the scale of 1:1.
Your design aesthetic sparks discourse through playful interpretations of conventional building processes. Why do you think architecture has to be so painful and difficult at times?
On the one hand, yes, it's a discipline that requires rigor and meticulous detail, but I would interject that it could/should also be fun. And fun doesn't mean it's not serious. Often times people write of fun as flippant or not serious or it's more art, not real architecture.
On the one hand, yes it’s a discipline that requires rigor and meticulous detail, but I would interject that it could/should also be fun. And fun doesn't mean it’s not serious.
In the past twenty years, I've probably listened to over 300 architecture lectures, and the one lecture that stands out to me from my time in London is when I saw Peter Cook from Archigram speak. I remember thinking, "yes, this is the exact way to think about architecture." Archigram was a group of architects who were arguing for humor, whimsy, and playfulness. They were all doing it against the drab backdrop of the British architecture scene at the time. They were stirring things up in a way that really resonated with me.
Would you say there's this underwritten rule or formality to traditional approaches to architecture projects, especially in terms of what professors want from students?
I believe American academia, for a long time, has privileged the difficult, formal project over other emerging pedagogies. The difficult, formal project is born on the East Coast, but I think the needle is moving. Things are catching up and changing.
Now you see a group of young, dedicated, newly-tenured academics who are spread across the country who aren't on a specific coast. They're infusing their schools of architecture with innovative pedagogy, and they're located in places [...] this is something really exciting, to have this new wave of discourse spreading.
It's great you bring this up because architecture can be playful in the most skillful way. You almost learn how to hack architecture and its pedagogy.
Exactly! Now you see a group of young, dedicated, newly-tenured academics who are spread across the country who aren't on a specific coast. They're infusing their schools of architecture with innovative pedagogy, and they're located in places like Texas, Illinois, Ohio, and Florida. This is something really exciting, to have this new wave of discourse spreading.
Let's get a bit academic here, how would you describe your teaching style? Who is Jennifer Bonner the academic? The instructor? The professor?
There are two different studios I've been teaching. In Atlanta, I was having students look at the city of Atlanta, and we made a guide book, A Guide to the Dirty South. We first documented the strange and urban architectural patterns. It became part guide book, part architectural manual, and part projection for the city. We also interviewed and collected oral history from people like the members of Goodie Mob, who coined the term "the dirty south." We got to learn about the city from their perspective, which is so important. We interviewed John Portman and Denise Scott Brown, but we also interviewed chefs and preservationists and other cultural figures. The interviews served to enhance the various chapters of the guide book. This was my attempt at reading a city in the way Charles Moore and Reyner Banham looked at Los Angeles, or how Rem Koolhaas read New York. I was trying to look at Atlanta. These teaching experiences led to other studios at the GSD, where I framed pedagogy around ordinary housing types, like the triple deckers in Boston and the dingbat in LA. I'm trying to read the ordinary, or "b-side" of the city.
I would also say that in my teaching I argue that a representational project is an architectural project. I encourage students to look to art practice or the everyday rather than representational examples from within the discipline. By looking outside, we can pull things into architecture from contemporary culture, like bubble letters from the '80s (laughs). So literally, I am dragging everyday references and things happening in pop culture into architecture as a way of challenging representation.
You mentioned the introspection of normal everyday objects, do your students find this easy to do? Or do they have a hard time finding these moments of opportunity?
I think they're coming to it quickly. I've been at the GSD for 4 years, where I usually teach design studios in our core curriculum, but I recently taught my first seminar titled "Representation First (!!!), Then Architecture." For this course, I gave weekly lectures and proposed theories about representation while the students executed a series of exercises around the content for each lecture.
Can you give us any examples?
A few quick-fire assignments included "Play with Your Food" or "Create a Youtube Film." I even asked the participants of the seminar to “Frost a Cake”. I wanted to suggest that ordinary acts can be quickly linked back to architecture. For example, for the frost-a-cake exercise, the students were looking at the wedding cake buildings as a typology in New York City, but they also looked at French piping techniques from the 1880s and cake-decorating techniques circa the 1950s using marzipan. So beyond traditions found in cake decorating, I included topics such as bump maps, bas relief, and techniques located in art practice identified by the words “squish” or “squeeze”. We also carefully studied Heinz and Hunts Ketchup commercials (squeeze!) from the mid-80s. This curation of 6 different words or things culminated in a proposed theory on architectural representation and resulted in a visual study each week.
Do you have any advice for students to help remind them of this type of architectural exploration?
I guess I'm noticing that after 10 years of teaching, students are taking less and fewer risks. So, I strive to inspire them, to provoke them and to push for radical risk taking. Experimenting is good, and that has to do with my education at the Rural Studio with Samuel Mockbee. He was very much a provocateur who pushed us to think about architecture with wild materials, strange plan drawings, and weird forms. I believe students are taking fewer risks. But my current thesis students aren't (laughs)! They're all in, so that's exciting!
...i’m noticing after 10 years of teaching, students are taking fewer risks. So, I strive to inspire them, to provoke them and to push for radical risk taking.
You have a great way of motivating and propelling students to explore architecture from different perspectives. One project I'm curious about is Still Life. Could you talk a bit more on this project?
Still Life was a major undertaking! It was my first year teaching at the GSD, and I was asked to become the faculty editor of the school's annual publication. This was not a small task because the project included a 400-page book and an exhibition. It was a lot to work through. However, I saw this as an exciting opportunity to generate a discourse around the school’s work through the topic of still life.
Still life, in art history and practice is a robust medium of collecting, gathering, and staging objects. Two student editors and myself created 17 still lifes using all the different student work from the larger school . We worked with food photographer Adam Detour to combine models from various disciplines and frame them together. It was great because you'll see a landscape architecture model next to an urban design massing model, next to an architectural thesis project. We were removing work from their disciplinary silos, and we're reorganizing them into newly staged representations.
Did you have any references for how you wanted to present these different projects together? Did you draw any inspiration from something specific?
Our references for creating still lifes came from Caravaggio paintings and high fashion advertisements. We cited influential works by Gerhard Richter, Giorgio Morandi, and Madelon Vriesendorp. As editors, it was very much a demonstration project for the current and incoming student body. I really wanted to ask the question: How can we use color in architecture? And you have to understand, I was given the work of the school that had been collected over the course of an academic year and the result was a room full of white museum board and brown chipboard models. The work and content of the school was really nice, but my immediate reaction to the overall aesthetic was shocking. And this is where the demonstration began, "Hey, what about color?" I knew I couldn't damage, paint or alter these models, but the one thing I could do was add color, temporarily. This led us to the work of Barbara Kasten and her use of colored gels in art photography. Her work was a major influence for projecting light onto these projects, which offered up another way to read the work of the GSD.
It's interesting you bring up Kasten and her work because I've seen so many students and studios utilizing this technique.
Yes, it’s really spread as a technique! Especially because how we all circulate, like, and share images online today. I brought this method of lighting objects with colored light from art practice, and now to see it evolve as a technique in our discipline is super exciting. It's flattering to see Still Life bring about a new form of representation for students and other contemporary architects.
Let’s talk about color...your work is filled with it. Is this something you knew you always wanted to incorporate, after hearing you discuss the concepts behind Still Life it seems as though this is something you’ve been thinking about.
I definitely push back against whatever system is in place for most of my work. When I was a student at Auburn I remember only using lime green for two years and this color was jarring to those professors. As a graduate student at the GSD, I used a lot of fuchsia pink, this was in 2007. (laughs) I don't know, I think it's always been in the spirit, but I will say my time in Los Angeles, teaching and being around the LA crowd, women like Barbara Bestor and April Greiman definitely inspired me. Color doesn't have to JUST be in models and drawings but can also exist in real work. You can throw color along the wall of a full-scale building. I would say Bestor has been a strong color reference for me. I've always been mesmerized by her materiality palette and the way she deploys it in architecture and space.
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There seems to be a growing female presence and leadership in architectural academia, was this the case when you were in school?
Definitely not the case in Auburn, and especially not in the profession when I was working at Foster + Partners. There was no female leadership when I was practicing in London. When I was a student in grad school, Toshiko Mori was the chair at the time, and I felt very fortunate to be a student under her leadership. I think there have now been huge waves of hires and we can name them all—it’s a long list! Women are now running major institutions, and I feel very fortunate to be at an institution that believes there should be 50/50 female/male representation teaching in the core in our design studios. However, that's not the case in other schools, unfortunately. I do believe this new system is charting exciting ways forward. But in the profession, I think in day-to-day interactions, job sites, conference rooms, we are still behind.
What does it mean to be an architect today and how does MALL change the possibilities for architecture?
I started my practice during the 2009 recession, and having gotten past that, being an architect today is extremely exciting. I'm interested in working on both highly conceptual projects and building real buildings. I'm also interested in development and how we can experiment on buildings. The developer/architect model is something I'm actively pursuing. Many people have done it, and I think there are lessons to be learned from past architects who've done that. I think that's where you can push and invent new typologies and work on materials. Granted, I'm not saying that there aren't real budgets to consider, but I think with a client-less model you're able to push things further and faster. You have the opportunity to set it out there and see how the market responds.
...the traditional office is obviously going to stay around as a model, but there’s plenty of room for others to define alternate modes of practice.
I much like the fact that there are numerous ways to define practice. The "traditional office" is obviously going to stay around as a model, but there's plenty of room for others to define alternate modes of practice. I think there are endless possibilities right now and I'm saying all these things because I've done this in my own way. I built my first project without a client, and I've survived all the risks that come with it. That's what it's about, learning to take these risks, and that's what I'm doing specifically at MALL.
If you could describe your work/practice in three words what would they be?
So I have three phrases, not three words. This was kind of difficult, but I thought it was a playful question, and I liked having the opportunity to think about that. My three phrases are: "Pictorially graphic," "Out of Place," and "Funnily Scaled."
Katherine is an LA-based writer and editor. She was Archinect's former Editorial Manager and Advertising Manager from 2018 – January 2024. During her time at Archinect, she's conducted and written 100+ interviews and specialty features with architects, designers, academics, and industry ...
30 Comments
Is this person a licensed architect?
Why get licensed when you got the $$$ and PR? Just hire some rubber stamp PA.
She did employ the services of a licensed associate architect for the house so ...
Seeing the the official AIA magazine featuring this apparently unlicensed designer is problematic. I guess the lesson here is that the USA internship and license process is just for suckers.
She is careful not to call herself an "Architect" on her website:
"Jennifer Bonner is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Master in Architecture II Program at Harvard University Graduate School of Design"
But she gets paid to teach "architecture"... just another example of the current ability of media image manipulation to override professional qualifications.
buddy scott cohen chaired the gsd architecture department and he isn't a licensed architect
Two wrongs don't make a right. Cohen, however, is more legit because he has formed a business in partnership with licensed architects.
fuck the license. most licensed architects ive seen are bozos.
Not licensed, so what?
She didn't do anything illegal or immoral. Why all the fuss?
it's nice to see academia moving towards a more visceral approach to theory, drawing on the obvious visual impact of art installation and sculpture over more abstractly verbal approaches to design.
but there is some irony that an architect so concerned with color designed a house and it's all white. the ghost of le corbusier haunts us still.
I love her work - though it is much different than my own and (typically) preferred aesthetic.
That said, I do think it is problematic to have someone teaching architecture who just now finished her first built work.
Also problematic to feature this in the AIA magazine (which it was).
Also problematic than female faculty and architects were essentially frozen out of the profession for the past 200 years +, so maybe it's ok she isn't licensed?
Also problematic that Harvard probably doesn't have a balance of seasoned old practitioners making up for the gaps in student's knowledge.
Today, there are more than enough licensed female architects to fill open teaching positions. There is no reason in this instance to relax a basic minimum qualification in order to create diversity.
This clarifies so much about the profession: There are clearly a few too many architects that think they could only possibly learn something of value if it is coming directly from a licensed architect and that clearly no one else could possibly have valid or valuable insights about design or the built environment.
She has a total of one (1) built work. Clearly waaaay overqualified to be Professor of Architecture at GSD.
Academics breeding academics, another reason why most buildings today are such utter garbage. Just like everything else: throw out the tried and true, tested and proven, accumulated wisdom of generations in favor of 'new' concepts and 3D printed bullshit (sandwiches!).
***** Love mid's comment about the coloritst's white house.
I'm a Registered Architect and I've taught studio. I'm a decent enough architect, a skilled designer, and a shitty teacher.
Should I teach in an Ivy? My point is: teaching is a skill that is very different from the ability to design a house or manage a construction project. Let good teachers teach.
University teaching by persons who lack customary professional license qualifications is pretty much not done in other professions in the USA like engineering, law, and medicine. I don't see how architecture should be different.
There are many great and influential professors who are not licensed architects, including Liz Diller, Scott Cohen, Nader Tehrani, and Jorge Silvetti, all of whom have very successful practices in partnership with others who are licensed. Silvetti won the Topaz, the highest honor for an architecture professor in the US. What matters is their intellectual and design contribution, their commitment to teaching and practice, and the impact they have had on many students and architects over the years.
This is exactly what Bonner is criticizing. The exclusive reference back to the old east coast intelligentsia. That said, this is news to me. I had no idea that there are people like Liz Diller who aren't licensed. Is this widely known, or am I just out of it?
I was also surprised to read that about DIller in the above post.
who cares if she is licensed or not. I really like her work. It’s sort of POMO, but without all the fuss. It’s elemental and referential at the same time...but then takes a poop on the purity of doing that by disrupting the rhythms and playing with colors...Fun stuff...fuck licensure.
F*uck those who skip internship and the exam so they can have more time and money to play "architect" and make pretty pictures and groovy social media.
Why?
The first comment on this thread is hilarious. If that’s where your mind takes you after looking at this it quite frankly says more about your insecurities than anything else. Show some respect for yourself.
Hopefully Bonner gets the Pritzker next year.
I don't think she needs to be licensed, but she ought to know something about practice. Also, implying you can't have fun within real parameters is a lie. Learning from a good teacher is important but not if the teacher knows little about the subject they are teaching. This is a huge problem in academia where many of the teachers are completely divorced from the practice of architecture and consequently give unrealistic expectations and worthless skills to those entering into the profession. You need both skills and knowledge.
Thayer-D
You need to relax on this crap. Inferring she doesn’t know how to teach, run a practice or have skills & knowledge is pathetic.
There are so many ways to contribute to the discipline of Architecture and you clearly do not want to look at anything beyond your pragmatic only tunnel. You also clearly have no idea what happens in academia either.
What makes this interesting is it is a non-traditional practice. This is exploration and it definitely looks more fun than whatever negative traditionalist (my way only) bullshit you’ve latched on to.
The rant above quite frankly says more about NPK1's insecurities than anything else.
NPK1, my point isn't about her but academia's habit of hiring people who don't practice the thing they are supposed to be teaching. By all means explore outside the box now and then, but teach kids how to build a sound box first, for god's sake. Prepare kids for what most of them will have to do. The geniuses have always taken care of themselves, the rest of us need to be able to bring a marketable skill to the workplace.
Looks like a preston scott cohen light, mixed with trying to be pomo and ultimately made a bad weird mix.
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