The University of Minnesota School of Architecture announces the appointment of five new tenured/tenure track faculty. “We are excited to welcome new faculty to the College of Design in 2022 who will bring a focus on teaching design as a critical practice engaging contemporary issues,” said Jennifer Yoos FAIA, Head of the School of Architecture. “Their studio-based work will expand our teaching in design theory and representation, material innovation, urbanism, and practices of architectural production.”
Alex Maymind is the new Director of Undergraduate Studies. His research tracks conflicts, origins, and myths around the production of architectural knowledge, in regard to the agency of architects in addressing urban problems, institutional critique, and pedagogical revision.
Alex holds a PhD from UCLA and an MArch from Yale. He was awarded the Walter B. Sanders Fellowship at the University of Michigan and taught at Cornell University, SCI-Arc, UCLA and Yale University. Professionally he has worked as a designer and researcher at offices in NYC and Los Angeles. Alex is a contributor to Log, Pidgin, Thresholds, Off-ramp, Interpunct, Dimensions, and Clog.
Federico Garcia Lammers is the new Director of Graduate Studies. In 2020, Federico was awarded the National AIA/ACSA Practice and Leadership Teaching Award for inventing and leading the “Forensics Studio”.
Federico’s research on the links between the structural innovations and labor practices of the Uruguayan engineering/construction firm, Dieste and Montañez, has been published and presented in Europe, North and South America. Most recently, his work was exhibited at Cornell University, and presented at the Architectural Association in London. His teaching and research connect expansive notions of citizenship with the labor systems that underlie architectural production. Prior to practicing in New York City, Lisbon, and the Twin Cities, he received an MArch from the University of Minnesota.
Dingliang Yang is an architect, urban designer, and the founding partner of VARI Design. Yang previously worked as an architect with SOM in San Francisco and at Coop Himmelb(l)au in Vienna and taught at Harvard’s GSD.
Yang is author of the books Urban Grids: Handbook for City Design (with Joan Busquets and Michael Keller), Osaka: World Expo as Urban Transformative Engine (Harvard, 2021 / Shinkenchiku, forthcoming), and Shanghai Regeneration: Five Paradigms (with Xiangning Li and Xiangming Huang).
He is the curator of the first Chongqing International Creative Week and has curated exhibitions about his works at the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Biennale, Cooper Union Gallery, and Harvard Drucker Gallery. Dingliang Yang received his DDes and MArch in Urban Design with distinction from Harvard University. He also holds a BArch from Zhejiang University with the university’s highest honor of the Chu Kochen Medal.
Jessica Garcia Fritz is a member of the new Design Justice College of Design faculty cluster. Her teaching and research challenge architecture’s role in nation-state building through the extraction of material territories in indigenous lands. As a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (Itazipco), Jessica focuses on the links between settler-colonialism, construction histories, and instruments of architectural practice through her research on specification writing.
Jessica received a grant to organize the Building Arts and Labor Symposium in South Dakota in 2021. She received an MArch from the University of Minnesota and has practiced professionally in the Twin Cities, Portugal, and New York City and as an exhibit designer for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Benjamin J. Smith’s research centers on design pedagogy, architectural aesthetics, representation and research methods. His research covers the origins and progress of SCI-Arc through the 1970s and 1980s and how the “college without walls” concept played out in the context of an architecture school.
He has worked for Morphosis Architects, George Yu Architects and has practiced independently. Smith holds a Doctorate from the University of Michigan and an MArch from SCI-Arc. Smith was previously director of graduate architecture programs at Tulane University, the Design of Theory Fellow at SCI-Arc, and taught at the University of Michigan.
