26/05/2025
Lauren McQuistion Joins the School of Architecture and Planning
The School of Architecture and Planning welcomes Lauren McQuistion to the Department of Architecture. She is a designer, educator, and researcher of the built environment, researching the spatial history of museum institutions and their entanglement with cultural identity formation through the visual and spatial regimes of art and architecture. “The architecture faculty are delighted with the addition of Lauren McQuistion this Fall. She is an experienced teacher and remarkable scholar who brings a deep interest in the connection between design and the history/theory of the built environment. Lauren is deeply interested in design pedagogy and particularly in the core studio sequence. Along with her scholarly accomplishments, she comes to us with 10-plus years of professional practice working on a range of large-scale public and private projects,” say chair of Architecture Chris Cornelius.
Prior to joining the University of New Mexico, Lauren served as Assistant Professor of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology and as Inaugural Virginia Architecture Research Fellow and Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia. Her research informs her teaching, emphasizing place-based learning and the critical interpretation of sites as palimpsests of past, present, and future socio-environmental conditions. She draws connections between the history, theory, and practice of architecture in a range of design based and theoretical courses, with expertise in the topics of 20th and 21st Century Architectural History and Theory, as well as studios that explore and challenge concepts of spatial typology and issues of temporality in the built environment. Her scholarship has been recognized by Columbia GSAPP's Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, the Society of Architectural Historians, the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, and the Constructed Environment Research Network.
Lauren holds degrees with distinction from the University of Virginia School of Architecture (B.S. in Architecture with a Minor in Architectural History) and the University of California Berkeley (M.Arch). She is currently a candidate in the PhD in the Constructed Environment program at the University of Virginia, where she will soon complete her dissertation, “Between Idea and Building: Art, Architecture, and Identity in the Whitney Museum of American Art.” She has worked professionally as an architectural designer in Washington D.C, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Detroit, Michigan, experiences she draws on in her research and teaching.
