MCA Talk: Johnston Marklee

About the Speakers

Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee are the founding partners of the architecture firm Johnston Marklee. They have taught at major universities including the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the Technical University of Berlin, and ETH Zurich. They have held the Cullinan Chair at Rice University and the Frank Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto.

Since its establishment in 1998 in Los Angeles, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 30 major awards and numerous publications. Johnston and Lee were named the 2016 USA Oliver Fellows for Architecture & Design by the United States Artists. A book on the work of the firm, titled House Is a House Is a House Is a House Is a House, was published by Birkhauser in 2016. This followed a monograph on the firm's work, published in 2014 by 2G.

Johnston Marklee’s projects are diverse in scale and type, and span seven countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Current projects include the Menil Drawing Institute, on the campus of the Menil Collection, opening in October 2017; a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, complete in the summer of 2017; and the new UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California.

The firm’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Architecture Museum of TU Munich.

Johnston and Lee are the Artistic Directors for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.