AAI Lecture: Caroline O Donnell

The AAI are delighted to host Caroline O'Donnell, founder and principal of CODA, and the Edgar E.Tafel Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell University, New York, for the penultimate lecture in the Complicity lecture series.

Caroline O’Donnell is a licensed architect, writer, and educator.

She is the Edgar A. Tafel Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell University. Her research and teaching areas are in ecological and contextual design and theory. O'Donnell also leads the Ecological Action Lab, which experiments with nose-to-tail practices, novel materials, and the reimagining of the function of objects. Recent projects include Friendship WC, a water and plastic bottle chandelier for the 2022 Tallinn Biennial, Primitive Hut and Evitim, two pavilions at Art Omi, New York, in collaboration with OMG, using biodegradable, living, and leftover materials.

She is sole principal of CODA, winner of MoMA/PS1's Young Architects Program in 2013 with the project Party Wall. Recent built projects include an inclusive addition to the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and Valentine Student Housing, in Ithaca, New York.

O'Donnell was the editor of the Cornell Journal of Architecture issues 8–10 and founding editor of Pidgin magazine. Publications include: Niche Tactics: Generative Relationships between Architecture and Site, Routledge (2015), The Architecture of Waste: Design for a Circular Economy: Ed. Caroline O’Donnell and Dillon Pranger, Routledge (2019), and Werewolf: The Architecture of Lunacy, Shapeshifting, and Material Metamorphosis, Caroline O’Donnell with José Ibarra, AR+D/ORO Publications (2022).

O'Donnell was born in Athlone, Ireland, and grew up there, and in Derry, Northern Ireland. She has a B.Arch from Manchester University, England (2000) with a specialization in Bioclimatics and an M.Arch from Princeton University (2004). She has practiced at KCAP, (Kees Christiaanse Architects and Planners), Rotterdam, NettletonWilloughby Williams, Sydney, Australia, and Eisenman Architects, New York.