Knowlton's new chief thinks global
Business First of Columbus - by Brian R. Ball Business First
The new director of Ohio State University's Knowlton School of Architecture expects to stress a global knowledge of design after a bit of globetrotting herself.
Ann Pendleton-Jullian, coming off 14 years of teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began settling into her studio office in late September with the start of the new academic year. The accomplished designer, lecturer and writer said students need to be prepared to work on projects beyond the Ohio landscape and America's shores.
A professional education program "has to be more than a junior year abroad," Pendleton-Jullian said. "It's about how we empower (students) to work abroad and apprentice abroad."
To that end, the design educator hopes to expand the school's overseas affiliations beyond the six European programs and increase the faculty's connections in other countries.
"I think that's part of the future," she said. "Many of (the graduates) who even stay in Columbus will be working on international projects."
Diversity in training
Pendleton-Jullian, 51 and a Cleveland Heights native, considered studying astrophysics in her early days at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. before switching to Cornell's architecture program. After working for design firms in Chicago and New York City, she returned to school to get a master's degree in architecture at Princeton University. She again worked in private practice in Los Angeles and Boston before joining the MIT faculty in 1993.
Her personal experiences and professional assignments introduced her to South American, European and Asian countries.
An ongoing project involving planning and design of a proposed women's college in Bangladesh exposed her to intercultural issues for the residential campus, where students will come from four countries with differing religious beliefs. The project, done in conjunction with MIT graduate students, also involves building a campus to withstand the seasonal monsoons and droughts in an environmentally sustainable manner.
"I really enjoy being out in the world, learning from others and being challenged," said Pendleton-Jullian, who in addition to English speaks Spanish and French.
While enjoying working on projects by herself, Pendleton-Jullian said good design stems from collaboration with other professionals, whether it's a landscape architect or an anthropologist.
"I'd bring in muscle when I needed muscle," she said. "For me, it's not about my drawing. It's always about collaboration."
Fitting the bill
The selection of Pendleton-Jullian over the summer concluded a second search for a new Knowlton School director, after the first round ended in August 2006 with a decision not to hire the lead candidate. Pendleton-Jullian's hiring also came just before the announcement that E. Gordon Gee would return as the university's president.
The dean of OSU's College of Engineering said he welcoms the outlook Pendleton-Jullian will bring to the architecture program.
"She's a global thinker, having worked on projects from Chile to Bangladesh and on both U.S. coasts," said William A. "Bud" Baeslack III.
Baeslack said that background fits well with the interdisciplinary approach Gee has said he wants the university's programs to instill.
"(Gee) is very much cross-college collaboration," Baeslack said. "And that's what Ann's about, working across colleges and across the College of Engineering's programs."
Pendleton-Jullian called architecture among the most innovative educational practices because of its project-based system in a studio environment that lasts for four hours, three times a week.
"It teaches a creative practice," she said of the rigorous schedule. Challenges that crop up during design, she said, require innovative thinking to quickly find resources to resolve the issue.
Architecture also presents a need for continued learning, in part because of ever-changing technology, new materials or changing environmental conditions.
"In design education," Pendleton-Jullian said, "you can't stop learning."
Ann Pendleton-Jullian
Title: Director, OSU Knowlton School of Architecture
Job duties: Serves as the administrator of Ohio State's architecture, landscape architecture and city and regional planning programs and its 29 full-time faculty members. The school has 212 graduate students, 316 undergraduate students admitted in the two design programs and 276 pre-majors not yet accepted into a program.
Education: Master's degree in architecture, Princeton University, 1983; bachelor's degree in architecture, Cornell Univeristy College of Architecture, Art & Planning, 1979
Salary: $205,344
Age: 51
Resides: Columbus
Family: Single, one daughter
Tidbit: Helped design a home for the late astronomer Carl Sagan and wife in Ithaca, N.Y.
614-220-5442 | bball@bizjournals.com
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