presented his building in terms of riddles—made of lands, topped by sea; built in a hurry, but preconceived.

MVRDV – Dutch Pavilion at the EXPO 2000, Hannover, Germany (2000).

John McMorrough is a researcher of contemporary architectural practices, an associate professor at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and a principal architect in studioAPT (Architecture Project Theory). As an architect John has worked for design offices in Kansas City, New York, Boston and Rotterdam, and has taught theory and design at the Yale School of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Ohio State University, the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and University of Illinois at Chicago. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Kansas, a Master of Architecture (with distinction) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Ph.D. in Architecture from Harvard University, where his doctoral research was on the pre-history of post-modernism. John’s research is motivated by the precept that contemporary architecture as a field of knowledge must constantly re-situate its productive capacities, both in its competencies vis-à-vis the specifics of building and in the reconsideration of its conceptual legacies. To date this effort has taken three forms:

1) Genealogies of recent architecture by way of investigations into its minor practices (including treatments on pedestrian malls, supergraphics, program, and post-modernism).

2) Theorization of current design practices and their privileged formats of production (installations, films, writing, and graphics).

3) Program building and curricular revisions in schools of architecture (as section head of architecture at the Ohio State University and architecture program chair at the University of Michigan).

 John’s current work focuses on articulating the modalities of world making (the apocalyptic, the utopian, the pastoral, and the realist) at play in contemporary design narratives (in architecture, as well as film, fictions, and games).