Ann Pendleton-Jullian, a Boston architect and associate professor at MIT, has been named director of the Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture (KSA) at The Ohio State University. A Cleveland native who has designed buildings around the globe, Pendleton-Jullian says she was attracted by KSA's international reputation, its faculty and the relationship it has with the Wexner Center for the Arts. In addition, she is intrigued by the fact that architecture, city and regional planning and landscape architecture are housed under one roof at Knowlton.
"The beauty for me about the Knowlton School with its new building is having the three parts of the KSA community in one learning and research environment," she says, adding that it promotes a single multi-faceted community of critical and intellectual discourse.
Pendleton-Jullian, who will assume the duties of director September 1, 2007, emphasizes that she comes from a long history of teaching integrated with practice. She plans to continue teaching and also will be actively involved with graduate recruitment. She has been known to personally contact prospective students and parents.
"We are excited that Ann has decided to join Ohio State," said William A. "Bud" Baeslack III, dean of Ohio State's College of Engineering. "She will bring tremendous intellect and energy to her leadership of the Knowlton School."
As the principal architect with her firm, Ann Pendleton-Jullian Architects in Boston, she has been responsible for a wide variety of projects, including campus planning and design of the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh and the master plan for the conversion of the North Truro Air Force Station in Cape Cod. She also has worked on projects in Chile, Argentina, Finland, Canary Islands and Quebec. In association with Atelier Jullian and Pendleton, she designed a home for the late astronomer Carl Sagan and his wife, author Ann Druyan, in Ithaca, N.Y.
"Good directors of schools or programs must tap into the talent they have, motivate individuals to achieve their absolute best, and at the same time create an environment in which individual motivations and talents coalesce into a community that is intellectually generous and effective," she says.
Pendleton-Jullian, who holds degrees from Cornell and Princeton universities, sees the implementation of ideas as "a design problem in its own right, using the resources at hand where applicable and generating new ones to supplement existing financial and talent resources."
She says she looks forward to returning to the Midwest. "I do believe we are formed by the first spaces we live in," she says.