John May

Associate Professor of Architecture, Architecture Thesis Director Co-Director

Contact

• [email protected]
• 617-495-1182

Office Location

40 Kirkland 1C

Websitewww.millionsarchitecture.com/

Research Areas

• History & Theory
• Housing
• Materials & Material Systems
• Representation
• Urbanism

• Architecture
• DDes
• PhD

On leave for Fall 2025

John May is founding partner, with Zeina Koreitem, of MILLIØNS , a Los Angeles-based design practice. Their recent work includes completed and ongoing projects in California, New York, Boston, Germany and Beirut. Recently selected as the winner of an international competition to reimagine the west wing of I.M. Pei’s Everson Musum, in Syracuse, NY, MILLIØNS’ experimental work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at Friedman Benda Gallery, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, The Architecture + Design Museum of Los Angeles, and Jai & Jai Los Angeles, among others. Their essays have appeared in Harvard Design Magazine, e-flux, Flaunt magazine, I.D., a+t, and in a catalog of their work on experimental collective living, New Massings for New Masses: Collectivity After Orthography  (PDF) (MIT, 2015).

Situated at the intersection of philosophy, technology, and the politics of environmentalism, May’s writings aim at a continual articulation of the conditions surrounding the contemporary design fields. His most recent book, Signal. Image. Architecture  (Columbia, 2019) contemplates the psychosocial effects of transmissible electronic images, and their consequences for architecture and urbanism. Design Technics: Archaeologies of Architectural Practice  (Minnesota, 2019; co-edited with Zeynep Çelik Alexander) explores the philosophical, historical, and political dimensions of contemporary design technologies. May’s essays and interviews have appeared in Log, Perspecta, Praxis, MIT Thresholds, Project, Quaderns, New Geographies, and Actar’s Verb: Crisis, among many others.

May previously taught at MIT, UCLA, SCI-Arc, and the University of Toronto. In 2012 he was named National Endowment for the Humanities Visiting Professor in Architecture at Rice University. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Visual Art from the College of William and Mary, a Master of Architecture (AP) with Distinction from Harvard GSD, and a doctorate in Geography and Environmental Studies from UCLA.