This event will be conducted in-person in The Rose Auditorium and through Zoom. 

For in-person attendance, please register in advance here.
For Zoom attendance, please register here.

Sharon Johnston, FAIA will present selections of current and past work from Johnston Marklee’s diverse portfolio, discussed in the context of arts and culture institutions and their relationship with the fabric and program of cities. She will explore the relationship of architecture and urbanism through case studies that demonstrate the integration of cultural projects.

The lecture will be followed by a Q&A moderated by Nader Tehrani. 

Johnston Marklee’s body of work is a model for breaking down boundaries between art and the public to design cultural institutions that engage communities in multi-faceted contexts, from large scale events and exhibitions to more intimate spaces for social engagement and repose. Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 50 major awards.

Sharon Johnston, FAIA, is a founding partner of Johnston Marklee, based in Los Angeles, CA and Cambridge, MA. Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 50 major awards, including the 2024 Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence and the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award in Architecture in 2022. The Johnston Marklee-designed Menil Drawing Institute was named a 2023 finalist for the Mies Hall Crown Americas Prize. A book on the work of the firm, entitled, HOUSE IS A HOUSE IS A HOUSE IS A HOUSE IS A HOUSE, was published by Birkhauser in 2016, and monographs include: 2G N. 67, El Croquis N. 198, and A+U N. 614.

Sharon has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design as Professor in Practice, Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles; and has held the Cullinan Chair at Rice University and the Frank Gehry International Chair at the University of Toronto. In 2019, Sharon was named Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture: New Generation Leader.

Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning fourteen countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent projects include the new, permanent home for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (ISP) at Roy Lichtenstein Studio in New York’s Greenwich Village; the exhibition design for the upcoming Smithsonian Design Triennial, Making Home, opening at Cooper Hewitt on November 2, 2024; the UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California; and the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas. Current projects include a renovation of the UCLA Reverend James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center in Los Angeles; two residential towers, Ray Nashville, in Tennessee, and Ray Phoenix, in Arizona; and the interior architecture and museology within the Kunstmuseum Hauptbau in Basel, Switzerland, in collaboration with Christ & Gantenbein.

The firm’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Architecture Museum of TU Munich. Together with partner Mark Lee, Sharon was the Artistic Director of the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

This event is open to the public. Registration is required.