J. Meejin Yoon MAUD ’97 has been named the next dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University. The first woman to hold the position since the college was established in 1896, Yoon is set to begin her five-year term on January 1, 2019.

Yoon currently serves as professor and head of the Department of Architecture at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, where she has worked for the past 17 years. A graduate of AAP, Yoon received her B.Arch in 1995 before earning a Master of Architecture in Urban Design with distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1997 and completing a Fulbright Fellowship in Korea the following year.

“I am very excited about my new role as Dean at Cornell and look forward to amplifying the agendas already at Cornell AAP that I can contribute to,” Yoon said in a press release. “Cornell has excellent programs in architecture, art, and city and regional planning. As a designer, I have always tried to work in ways that cut across or sit at the intersection between disciplinary boundaries and I find the eco-system of disciplines and expertise at Cornell extremely substantive. I also see tremendous potential for expanding the role of technology within the culture of design at Cornell, from computational design and digital fabrication to data-driven processes in planning to new forms of media in the arts.”

In addition to her academic roles, Yoon is founding principal of Höweler + Yoon Architecture LLP, the practice she leads with Eric Höweler, associate professor of architecture at the GSD. The award-winning studio is currently working on projects around the world, including the MIT Museum in Cambridge, the Memorial for Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia, and mixed-use buildings in China. Work from the studio was featured in the Spring 2018 GSD exhibition, Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech. HYA will remain in Boston.

Photo by Andy Ryan, courtesy of HYA.