Jennifer Bonner
Associate Professor of Architecture

Jennifer Bonner is Associate Professor of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Bonner founded MALL in 2009, a creative practice that stands for Mass Architectural Loopty Loops or Maximum Arches with Limited Liability—an acronym with built-in flexibility.
Born in Alabama, Bonner is a recipient of the 2021 United States Artist Fellowship, Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Emerging Voices Award (AIA/ Young Architects Forum), Progressive Architecture (P/A) Award and Next Progressives (Architect Magazine). Her creative work has been published in architectural trade publications including Architectural Review, Metropolis, Gray, Azure and Wallpaper*, as well as, more experimental journals including a+t , DAMN, PLAT, Offramp, Room One Thousand, Flat Out and MAS Context. She is the co-editor of Blank: Speculations on CLT (with H.Kara), author of A Guide to the Dirty South: Atlanta, faculty editor of Platform: Still Life, and guest editor for ART PAPERS special issue on architecture and design of Los Angeles. Bonner has exhibited work at the Royal Institute of British Architects, National Building Museum, WUHO gallery, HistoryMIAMI, Yve YANG gallery, pinkcomma gallery, Armstrong Gallery at Kent State, Yale Architecture Gallery, Istanbul Modern Museum, Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Bonner received a Bachelor of Architecture from Auburn University and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where she was awarded the James Templeton Kelley Prize for her project Assemblage of Twins. Her undergraduate thesis project, the Cedar Pavilion, was designed and constructed at the Rural Studio in Perry County, Alabama and received an AR Award for Emerging Architecture (2005).
Bonner was the first recipient of an annual teaching fellowship at Woodbury University in Los Angeles and held the position of TVSDesign Distinguished Studio Critic at Georgia Institute of Technology. Previously, she has also taught design studios and seminars at Auburn University, the Architectural Association, and Lund University. Bonner worked in the office of Foster + Partners in London and Istanbul on the Palace of Peace in Astana, Kazakhstan. Later as Project Architect at David Chipperfield Architects she worked on design proposals for Melnikov’s Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage in Moscow and the Turner Contemporary in Margate, UK.
Courses
Publications
-
Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech
Edited by K. Michael Hays and Andrew Holder
Jennifer Bonner, Catherine Ingraham, Edward Eigen, Phillip Denny and Antoine Picon, ContributorsDecember 2021
-
America
Mark Lee, Jerold S. Kayden, Jennifer Bonner, K. Michael Hays, Michael Meredith, Edward Eigen, Mack Scogin, Max Kuo, Sharon Johnston, Maurice Cox, Rahul Mehrotra, Kersten Geers, David Van Severen, Sean Canty and Michael Van Valkenburgh
February 2021
-
Pairs 01
Jennifer Bonner, Contributor
February 2021
-
Platform 9: Still Life
Edited by Jennifer Bonner
November 2016
News
-
Blank: Speculations on CLT edited by Jennifer Bonner and Hanif Kara
March 1, 2022
-
Does Originality Still Exist? On Pushing the Boundaries of Architecture Representation
January 19, 2022
-
With Mass Timber and the Scandinavian Effect, Jennifer Bonner and Hanif Kara speculate how wood might recapture the American architectural imagination
November 24, 2020
Projects
-
300 Panels, 400 Cuts, 400 Bandages
Jennifer Bonner and Hanif Kara, Instructors
Spring 2020
-
2020 James Templeton Kelley Prize: Anna Goga’s “Porch House + 300 Panels, 400 Cuts, 400 Bandages”
Jennifer Bonner, Instructor
Spring 2020
-
A Pile of CLT
Jennifer Bonner and Hanif Kara, Instructors
Spring 2020
Exhibitions
-
Representation First (!!!), Then Architecture
Jennifer Bonner, Curator
APR 1 – MAY 17, 2019
-
Still Life: A Harvard GSD Exhibition 2015–2016
Jennifer Bonner, Curator
MAR 20 – MAY 12, 2017
Events
-
CANCELLED – “Mass Timber: Beyond Instrumentality and Technology”
Hanif Kara and Jennifer Bonner, Moderators
Nader Tehrani, Panelist -
“Emerging Issues in Architectural Representation,” with Jennifer Bonner and Zeina Koreitem, moderated by Michael Hays
Jennifer Bonner, Panelist
-
Jennifer Bonner, “Close Reading of the Good Ol’ Ordinary”
Jennifer Bonner, Lecturer