MIT News
School of Architecture and Planning 
May 5, 2016

Professor and Department of Architecture head J. Meejin Yoon has been awarded the 2016 Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) Teaching Award of Excellence. The jury cited Yoon’s “innovative and critical pedagogical approach to integrating new ideas, techniques and technologies into her teaching and research. This approach is supported by excellence in academic leadership, scholarship and professional practice.”

Yoon’s academic and professional work, as a principal of Boston-based Höweler + Yoon, investigates the intersections between design, technology, and public space. At MIT, Yoon organized 4.110J / 4.S64 / MAS.330J (Design across Scales), a course taught with Professor Neri Oxman in which students from across the Institute explore relationships among design, science, and technology while developing methods for collaborative design research. Yoon also led efforts to create a Design Minor in the Department of Architecture that will open to all MIT undergraduates in fall 2016. 

Award recipients in other categories include Virginia San Fratello and Ron Rael, Charles Eastman, Andrew Payne, and the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. ACADIA is an international network of digital design researchers and professionals focused on the role of computation in architecture, planning, and building science. 

The awards ceremony will take place during the 2016 ACADIA International Conference, “Posthuman Frontiers: Data, Designers, and Cognitive Machines,” at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning in Ann Arbor October 27-29.