Architect, Visiting Professor John Ronan to Present 'Out of the Ordinary' Lecture on April 2

Courtesy of John Ronan Architects

Visitors enter the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, Illinois, through a garden, which forms an urban sanctuary that mediates between the street and the 26,000-square-foot enclosed building.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. ­– John Ronan will present a lecture at 4:30 p.m. Monday, April 2, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design lecture series.

Ronan, FAIA, is founder and principal of John Ronan Architects in Chicago, Illinois. He serves as lead designer on all projects the office undertakes, and he is known for his abstract yet sensuous work, which explores materiality and atmosphere. Ronan is also the associate dean of curriculum and the John and Jeanne Rowe Endowed Chair Professor of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology's College of Architecture in Chicago.

Ronan is the Fay Jones School's John G. Williams Distinguished Visiting Professor in Architecture this semester.

In his lecture, titled "Out of the Ordinary," Ronan will discuss his attempts at transcending pragmatism within cultural and professional contexts. 

Since founding his firm in 1999, Ronan has been selected to The Architectural League of New York's Emerging Voices program, was named as a member of the Design Vanguard by Architectural Record magazine and was a winner in the Townhouse Revisited Competition staged by the Graham Foundation. In 2004, his firm won the prestigious Perth Amboy High School Design Competition, a two-stage international design competition to design a 472,000-square-foot high school in New Jersey.

Ronan's work has been covered extensively by the international design press, and a monograph on his work, Explorations, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2010. In 2015, the Center for American Architecture and Design at the University of Texas published a book about his Poetry Foundation project. His firm has received two AIA Institute National Honor Awards — for the Poetry Foundation and the Gary Comer Youth Center — and in 2016, the firm was one of seven international finalist firms for the Obama Presidential Center. In 2017, Ronan was named an Architecture Award winner by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Ronan received a Master in Architecture with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Michigan. He has lectured widely, and his work has been exhibited internationally, including by the Art Institute of Chicago and The Architectural League of New York's Urban Center.

The public is invited to attend. Admission is free, with limited seating.

For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or fayjones.uark.edu.