UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Stuckeman School at Penn State will host J. Meejin Yoon, co-founder of Höweler + Yoon Architecture and the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art and Planning, at 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 25 as the final guest this semester in the school’s 2023-24 Lecture + Exhibit Series. Co-hosted by the Department of Architecture, the lecture will be held in the Stuckeman Family Building Jury Space and via Zoom.

In her lecture, titled “What's the Matter,” Yoon will present works using the phrase "What's the Matter?" as a framework to locate contemporary architecture and design in a broader cultural context. She will focus on research, environment and institutions, delving into what matters, and discussing how architects and creative practitioners can understand, enable and create.

“The term "matter" references not physical substance but rather the essence of something — specifically, the essence of the problems facing us today,” Yoon said. “Put another way: what are our values, beliefs and aspirations? As architects, artists and designers, how do we materialize what we value? Or, how does what we build convey our values? And, how do we build what matters?”

In practice, Yoon investigates intersections between architecture, technology and public space  with Höweler + Yoon. The firm has earned numerous awards, including the Best of Design Award in the Architect’s Newspaper, the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture’s Design Excellence Award, and Architect Magazine’s Progressive Architecture Award, among other honors. 

Yoon is committed to advancing pedagogy, research and practice to expand knowledge and imaginaries across fields and disciplines. Her notable projects include the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia, Moongate Bridge in Shanghai, the Collier Memorial, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum.

At Cornell, Yoon directs the Design Across Scales Lab, which examines technology and territory broadly to explore the spatial implications and possibilities of architectures and infrastructures on urbanism, the built environment and public space.

Yoon's work has been widely exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Vitra Design Museum, and the National Art Center in Japan, among others. She is co-author of “Verify in Field: Projects and Conversations Höweler + Yoon” and “Public Works: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig;” and author of “Absence,” an artist book published by Printed Matter and the Whitney Museum of Art in 2003.

Yoon earned a bachelor of architecture from Cornell and a master of architecture in urban design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Recent honors include the 2022 World Cultural Council Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts, and in 2021, Yoon was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in the field of architecture, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States.