Ann Pendleton-Jullian is an architect, writer, and educator whose work explores the interchange between culture, environment, and technology.

From a first short career in astrophysics, ApJ has come to see the world through a lens of complexity framed by principles from ecology theory. This, in tandem with a belief that design has the power to take on the complex challenges associated with an emergent highly networked global culture has led her to work on architecture projects that range in scale and scope from things to systems of action – from a house for the astronomer Carl Sagan to a new university for southeast Asian women in Bangladesh to a seven village ecosystem for craft-based tourism in Guizhou province in China – and in domains outside of pure architecture including new models for higher education, for K-12, peacebuilding, patient centered health, and human and economic development in marginalized populations.

ApJ is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor of Design at Georgetown University and Professor at Ohio State University where she served as Director of the Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture from 2007-2012. Prior to OSU, she was a tenured Professor at MIT for fourteen years. She is also a core member of a cross-disciplinary network of global leaders established by the Secretary of Defense to examine questions of emerging interest, and a member of the International Advisory Panel for Singapore’s Redevelopment Authority.

As a writer, she has most recently finished a manuscript entitled Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence, with co-author John Seely Brown, that presents a tool set for designing within complex systems and on complex problems. She earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University and a Masters of Architecture degree from Princeton University.

Projects