Phu Hoang named Architecture Section Head

The Knowlton School at The Ohio State University is pleased to announce that Phu Hoang has been named the next Section Head of Architecture.

“I am delighted to welcome Phu Hoang to the Knowlton School, the College of Engineering, and Ohio State,” said Knowlton School Director Dorothée Imbert. “His body of work at MODU and his teaching illustrate a command of architecture across scales and the integration of multidisciplinary ideas through collaborations with engineers, scientists, and artists. The intertwining of research and practice—speculative and built—as well as material experimentation and an engagement with climatic and social concerns, offer great opportunities for the future direction of Knowlton’s architecture section.”

Phu Hoang, AIA, FAAR, is a licensed architect and Founding Director of the interdisciplinary architecture and design practice MODU. MODU has designed for numerous cultural institutions, including the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach, Design Museum Holon, and Creative Time. Hoang is a fellow and trustee of the American Academy in Rome and President of the Society of Fellows of the American Academy in Rome.

“I am thrilled to be appointed the Architecture Section Head at Knowlton,” said Hoang. “Knowlton has long had a strong design culture, and I look forward to collaborating with its tremendous faculty to cultivate its next generation. The architecture discipline faces a pivotal moment—which is also an opportunity—as it integrates expertise from many disciplines. Architecture at the Knowlton School is uniquely positioned for interdisciplinarity with landscape architecture and city and regional planning sections, as well as with disciplines outside of its walls, from engineering to the arts to the sciences. Allowing more voices into design conversations strengthens the idea that architecture is for all, and that design can be a more inclusive social practice.”

Hoang is the author with MODU co-director Rachely Rotem of Field Guide to Indoor Urbanism. The upcoming book examines three cities—New York, Rome, and Tokyo—and considers examples of indoor urbanism accompanied by MODU’s designs for climate adaptation. With Rotem, Hoang was awarded the Founders’ Rome Prize in Architecture (2017), the Emerging Voices prize (2019) from the Architectural League of New York, and the U.S.-Japan Creative Artists fellowship (2018) from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as research grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (2021, 2012) and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (2013).

Before joining the Knowlton School, Hoang taught at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.