New Hires at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s School of Architecture

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s School of Architecture is delighted to announce the following new hires:

Frances Hsu as Assistant Professor on tenure track. Dr. Hsu is a licensed architect, designer and scholar who pursues international, cross-disciplinary, and design-driven research. She works at multiple scales and challenges the status quo to address the complexities of architecture and urbanism. Her research and teaching coalesce around modes of “expanded” practice. Frances’s current research investigates Rem Koolhaas’s thinking and design methods in the early years of OMA. She also explores architecture through multiple lenses including, “The Politics of Food,” studies of Housing and Politics, and Digital Pedagogies for the Pandemic Era. Frances earned Her PhD at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture/ETH Zürich, her M.Arch. at Harvard University Graduate School of Design where she received a Wheelwright Fellowship for the study of modernist landscape, and her B.S. Arch. at the University of Virginia. She has taught at Marywood University School of Architecture, University of North Carolina Charlotte, and Texas A&M University, as well as several international institutions.

Jeremy Magner as Assistant Professor on tenure track. In his teaching, research, and practice, Jeremy challenges conventional boundaries between designer and builder. He aims to develop a deeper engagement with architecture’s means of production by addressing its roots in regional cultures of making. Jeremy’s work results in a new means of collaboration through the study of the Lithic, Metallic, and Xylological forms of materiality. He earned his M. Arch. at Georgia Tech and a B.S.Arch. at University at Buffalo. Jeremy was the Tennessee Architecture Fellow 2020-22 and also a Lecturer at UTK COAD, prior to which he was a lecturer in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. In 2015, he was selected as an Artist-in-Residence/Affiliated Artist at AUTODESK Pier 9 Workshop and for many years managed project fabrication and design for notable firms including robotics-leader Machineous, Gensler, and Morphosis.

Micah Rutenberg as Assistant Professor on tenure track. Micah’s teaching and research addresses the infrastructural, technological, and ecological arrays that shape patterns of urbanization and territorial administration in the Tennessee Valley. He was the Tennessee Architecture Fellow 2017-18 and has been a Lecturer in the School of Architecture since then. His research includes the Techno-Scientific Petting Zoo of the Anthropogenic Sublime, a speculative design-research project that seeks to re-frame the relationship between natural, cultural, and technological systems surrounding Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Micah is currently completing a book with Dr. Avigail Sachs, The Logistics of Mechanized Landscapes: Mapping the TVA, which is a culmination of his computational mapping studies to expose the geospatial lineage of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the period from 1933-1953. Micah earned his M.S. in Design Research, M.Arch., and B.S. Arch. from the University of Michigan. Prior to his arrival at the University of Tennessee, Micah taught at Woodbury University and Arizona State University.

Mark Stanley as Assistant Professor on tenure track. Mark is the co-founder of StudioMARS, a speculative design-research practice. Mark’s practice and research runs full speed towards the strange, weird, problematic, curious, extreme and the uncertain. He expects that architecture participate in the future, and he does this by critically cultivating “the now.” His recent project, “Manhattan Project 2.0, ‘Post-Nuclear Blooms’,” will be included in the forthcoming publication Regional Globalism, based on the symposium series of the same name. Mark has also designed publications, including the forthcoming Speculative Coolness and Pamphlet Architecture 34. Prior to his arrival in Tennessee, Mark taught at Woodbury University School of Architecture and the University of Michigan, where he earned both his M.S. in Design Research and M.Arch., and his B.S.Arch. from Texas Tech University.

Catty Dan Zang as Assistant Professor on tenure track. Catty is the founder of Temporary Office, a practice that explores architecture and digital technology through the production of exhibitions, objects, drawings, animations, installations, and writings. Her work has been exhibited at the MetroLab at Florida Atlantic University (2023), the ‘T’ Space, London Design Festival, Carnegie Museum of Arts, A+D Museum, and Harvard GSD. She earned her BArch from Tsinghua University, a MArch with Honors from Washington University in St. Louis, and a MDes in Technology from Harvard University Graduate School of Design where she was the 2017 recipient of the Daniel L. Schodek Award for Technology and Sustainability. Catty most recently taught at UNC Charlotte.

Julie Kress as the new Tennessee Architecture Fellow. Julie states that her proposed project, “Disorderly Constructs, … [is] an ongoing exploration of how animation and architecture have intersected historically and where the disciplines might align in the future. … Animation can conjure up impossible worlds that feel tangible, and the ability to manufacture worlds extends past the computer screen.” Prior to her arrival at as a Lecturer at UTK, Julie was a Teaching Fellow at the Rhode Island School of Design where she received her M.Arch. as well as the Super Jury Thesis Award. Julie earned her B.S.Arch. from Temple University.