Knowlton School

Knowlton School The Knowlton School at Ohio State offers degree programs in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and

The Knowlton School houses three academic sections: Architecture, Landscape Architecture and City and Regional Planning. The school offers undergraduate and master's level degree programs in each discipline as well as a PhD in City and Regional Planning. Knowlton Hall, dedicated in 2004, is a state-of-the-art facility for the Knowlton School and is home to the Banvard Gallery, the M/I Homes Founda

tion Materials/Fabrication Laboratory, an experimental roof garden space, the 30,000-volume Architecture Library, the Knowlton School Digital Image Library and the KSA Café.

The Knowlton School is pleased to announce that Landscape alumna Allison Swanka (MLA ’26) has been awarded a 2026 ASLA H...
08/26/2026

The Knowlton School is pleased to announce that Landscape alumna Allison Swanka (MLA ’26) has been awarded a 2026 ASLA Honor Award in the Analysis and Planning category from the American Society for Landscape Architects (ASLA) for her directed research project, Making Up Ground: New Language for the Wasteland.

ASLA student awards “represent the highest level of achievement among the future of the profession.”

---

Making Up Ground analyzes conventional language and management approaches for Superfund sites, focusing on Palmerton, Pennsylvania, and the Palmerton Zinc Pile site. Twenty miles of the scenic, regional Appalachian Trail go right through the middle of this site, raising broader questions about the perception and design of contaminated landscapes. Language is used as a tool to examine the poetics and meaning of the site, rather than treating it as a place to be fenced off or camouflaged, or solely as a problem to solve. A design plan for adaptive management demonstrates a system for making ecological restoration a legible and cultural way of working with these complex landscapes.

Project Committee:
— Kristi Cheramie
— Parker Sutton

Read more
https://bit.ly/4cawN0n

Open Now!The Thunder is Loud and RollingAUG 25–OCT 15 in the Banvard GalleryThe Thunder is Loud and Rolling brings toget...
08/26/2026

Open Now!
The Thunder is Loud and Rolling
AUG 25–OCT 15 in the Banvard Gallery

The Thunder is Loud and Rolling brings together practitioners confronting the fraught conditions shaping southern Lebanon today, where earth and sky emerge as sites of struggle and fields of possibility. While older negotiations with the environment persist, agricultural life must now calibrate between a high-tech occupation overhead and an enduring fidelity to land and harvest below, giving rise to spatial and cultural practices that unsettle any easy division between war and peace.

In their drawings, EcoRove and Mohamad Nahleh render this entanglement legible, tracing how militarization is at once eclipsed and reimagined through an insistence on a shared, postcolonial future. Through sound installation and ceramic bells, Ghida Anouti and Jess Myers tune the space to the enduring temporalities of land and the strained listening that occurs in the fragile timing of safety and seasonal order.

The Banvard Gallery is located on the first floor of Knowlton Hall and is open Monday–Friday from 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Read more
https://bit.ly/4wTY7Y6

TOMORROW!AUGUST 26, 1–1:30 p.m.Knowlton Hall, Big StairsAll students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to join Knowlton...
08/25/2026

TOMORROW!
AUGUST 26, 1–1:30 p.m.
Knowlton Hall, Big Stairs

All students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to join Knowlton School Director Frank Jacobus and Knowlton leadership to kick off the 2026–27 academic year.

The presentation will include an overview of the upcoming semester as well as information on events and initiatives.

https://knowlton.osu.edu/events/2026/08/all-school-meeting-autumn-2026?utm_campaign=eng_marketing-activity_fy27&utm_content=1787670030&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

08/24/2026

The Knowlton School is pleased to announce the Autumn 2026 Baumer Lecture Series. For Autumn 2026, the series returns to Knowlton Hall’s Gui Auditorium for nine in-person lectures.

The first lecture will be held on September 2 with Ghida Anouti.

All lectures are free and open to the public on Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m. ET.

---

Speakers

— Ghida Anouti / September 2
— Clancy Moore / September 9
— Faranak Miraftab / September 16
— Gonzalo Cruz / September 30
— Greg Castillo / October 7
— Gavin Shatkin / October 21
— Max Creasy / October 28
— Bruno Carvalho / November 4
— Kwong Von Glinow / November 18

Read more
https://bit.ly/3U6BCla

A rare break from the August showers for the last Friday before the start of classes—see you next week!
08/21/2026

A rare break from the August showers for the last Friday before the start of classes—see you next week!

The Knowlton School is pleased to announce that Ruo Jia will join the Architecture Section as a visiting professor for t...
08/20/2026

The Knowlton School is pleased to announce that Ruo Jia will join the Architecture Section as a visiting professor for the 2026–27 academic year.

Ruo Jia is an architect, theorist and historian, and founder and director of the research-based practice IfWorks, exploring architecture/theory possibilities individually or collectively. Jia is the author of Chinese Experimental Architecture Or French Poststructuralist Theory: Different Patches of the Concrete, which seeks to create a critical narrative to access the Chinese Experimental Architecture movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s and its legacy in transnational architectural theory and practice.

Her work has been published in The Journal of Architecture, Representations, Log, Brooklyn Rail, Journal of Architectural Education, arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, and Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, among others, and she guest edited a special publication series on “Asian Feminist Architectural Possibilities” in collaboration with e-flux Architecture.

Jia has a PhD in Architectural History and Theory from Princeton University School of Architecture with an interdisciplinary humanities certificate from Media+Modernity, a MArchII from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and a MArch and a BArch from Southeast University School of Architecture. Before joining Knowlton, she taught at Pratt, Cornell, Harvard, CUNY, Columbia, Princeton, and others.

Read more
https://bit.ly/3Scqhzo

The Knowlton School is pleased to announce that Andy Polefrone will join Knowlton as a 2026–27 Midwest Landscape Lab Res...
08/20/2026

The Knowlton School is pleased to announce that Andy Polefrone will join Knowlton as a 2026–27 Midwest Landscape Lab Research Fellow.

Andy Polefrone is a designer and educator based in the Midwest. His research explores alternative forms of landscape practice, possibilities for climate adaptation through public planting strategies, and connections between landscape history and climate planning today. His graduate thesis was a cultural and political history of the street tree in the United States, focusing on the expression of that history in his hometown of Pittsburgh.

Before joining the Knowlton School, Andy worked on public-space projects at various scales with GGN, Merritt Chase, and MKSK. He also taught urban design studios and landscape history at the University of Cincinnati, and middle school art and design. His background in studio art and fabrication strongly informs his approach to both teaching and practice. That approach foregrounds physical modeling, building, and maintenance as methods of understanding.

Polefrone is passionate about design education as a tool for empowering students to think and engage critically with the worlds they inhabit—ecological, social, and cultural—and for imbuing a sense of responsibility to those worlds. Outside of the classroom or studio, he can typically be found exploring Columbus by bike. He is excited to join the Midwest Landscape Lab’s research cohort and to return to Knowlton, where he received his Master of Landscape Architecture.

Read more
https://bit.ly/465H6PA

08/18/2026

Field recording /
Katherine Jenkins + Parker Sutton /
at the Prairie with Nine Rooms

Prairie with Nine Rooms is a research project by Jenkins and Sutton that transformed a disused tennis and basketball court on the Columbus campus into a space that Sutton says can be “both relaxing and tranquil, but it can also be energizing and activating and stimulating.”

Several of the nine rooms are 'furnished' with charred-wood pieces from Sutton and Paula Meijerink's Log Atelier—a project that preserves felled trees from Ohio State's Columbus campus through a traditional process similar to yakisugi.

The Knowlton School is saddened to report the death of Professor Emeritus Michael B. Cadwell, FAAR, FAIA, LEED AP. Cadw...
08/17/2026

The Knowlton School is saddened to report the death of Professor Emeritus Michael B. Cadwell, FAAR, FAIA, LEED AP.

Cadwell joined the faculty in 1989 and served as director of the Knowlton School from 2011-2020 and as Architecture Section head from 2010–2011 and from 1997–2004.

In teaching and practice, Cadwell explored construction as a transformative cultural act. In an interview at the end of his tenure as director, Cadwell said, “It’s a big world. Our disciplines provide us with vehicles with which to navigate the world. We must remain open to the world, or we’ll sail off to nowhere.”

For over thirty years in the studio, classroom, and from the director’s office, Cadwell guided hundreds of students along their path to a career in design and planning. He leaves an indelible legacy of generosity, humor, and critical thinking.

Read more
https://bit.ly/4ghJQOH

Address

275 W. Woodruff Avenue
Columbus, OH
43210

Telephone

+16142921012

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Knowlton School posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The University

Send a message to Knowlton School:

Shortcuts

Share