11.07.19 Visiting Lecture | Jennifer Yoos and Vincent James: Surreptitious Urbanisms

Jennifer Yoos and Vincent James will discuss their recent book, Parallel Cities, and its relationship to their practice, including recent projects.

Jennifer Yoos and Vincent James are partners of VJAA. Based in Minneapolis, the firm is known for its innovative approach to architectural practice, to environmental design, and to highly crafted buildings. They are authors of a monograph on their practice published by Princeton Architectural Press as well as their recent book Parallel Cities: The Multilevel Metropolis (2016).

Their practice, writing and research is grounded in the study of how architecture is interwoven with its social, cultural, and material context. The work is experimental, research-based and intentionally diverse. VJAA works at a range of scales, including urban and infrastructural projects to the design of new buildings at a variety of scales to the creative reuse of existing buildings to furniture and installations to books, exhibitions and developing creative research that informs building design.

VJAA is the recipient of the 2012 National American Institute of Architects Firm Award. The firm has received twenty-two national design awards, including six National American Institute of Architects Honor Awards, six Progressive Architecture Awards, and two American Institute of Architects/Committee on the Environment Top Ten Green Building Awards.

Jennifer received her Graduate Diploma in Design from the Architectural Association in London, her professional degree in Architecture from the University of Minnesota and was awarded a 2002-2003 Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Jennifer was recently as the Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and was previously the John G. Williams Distinguished Professor at the University of Arkansas and a faculty member at the University of Minnesota (1997-2015).

Vincent James was appointed Adjunct Professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he taught from 2000-2006. More recently he was the John G. Williams Distinguished Professor at the University of Arkansas, Visiting Professor at MIT, the Morgenstern Chair and Visiting Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the Cass Gilbert Professor in Practice at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture. He received his Master of Architecture from the University of Wisconsin and has been a guest lecturer at numerous schools of architecture.