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John McMorrough

@john_mcmorrough

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It’s here! The Spring *digital* issue of Portico is available online (click the link in our bio). Our feature story is a Student Work Showcase that dives deep into an M.Arch Thesis where students rethink concrete labor, formwork, and sustainability; a M.U.R.P. Capstone which works to develop a framework for Memorializing Racial Violence; a Wallenberg studio taking students to the Sonoran Desert to search for social, conceptual, material, and systemic propositions; and an Urban Technology studio where students explore Eastern Market and design for the future. All this plus faculty features, alumni profiles, and more. Read, watch, and enjoy all the great content in the latest issue! Image credits: Slides 1-2: “Edible Commons: Restaurant as Microcosm of Worlds” by M.Arch Thesis student Brianna Manzor, winner of this year’s Burton L. Kampner Memorial Award (Professor: John McMorrough) Slides 3-6: “Cured Creases” by M.Arch Thesis students Felix Lam & Andrew Masternak (Professor: Tsz Yan Ng) 7-10: “Monuments, Memory, and Meaning-Making” MURP Capstone students visiting the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN (Professor: Lauren Hood) 11-12: “Shared Skies” by BS Arch students Anna DeYoung & Watson Baek (Professor: Geoff Thun) 13-14: UT Strategic Design & Systems at Eastern Market, Detroit, MI (Professors: Bryan Boyer and Wonyoung So) 15: Spring 2026 Portico* cover
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Perspecta 40: Monster (2008). Editors: Marc Guberman @theoriginalspain, Jacob Reidel @jacob_reidel, and Frida Rosenberg @fridaros. Designers: Sebastian Campos and Andrew Shurtz @poorly_spaced. Featuring Terry Kirk on monstrousness, monumentality, and the sublime; Mario Carpo on the digital demise of the Albertian paradigm; Jürg Lehni on subverting software giants; Marcelyn Gow and Ulrika Karlsson on the transformation of materiality into operating systems; Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Ryuji Fujimura (trans. Eric Shiner) toward a typo-morphology of Tokyo; John May on statistical-mechanical geographic vision; Arindam Dutta on globality as an epistemological project; a remembrance of James Stirling by Leon Krier; Edward Eigen on the disappearance of Charles Perrault; Mark Jarzombek on the sanitization of messy architectural disciplinarity; Mark Foster Gage on the rebirth of beauty; Joshua Prince-Ramus on Museum Plaza; a 1970 interview with Kevin Roche; Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen on the implosion of Roche Dinkeloo’s New Haven Coliseum; a portfolio of photos of the New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum by Colin Montgomery; Claire Zimmerman on the distortions of architectural photography; Emmanuel Petit on Arata Isozaki’s poetics; John McMorrough on picturesque ruination; Michael Weinstock on mutation; Greg Lynn on making new monsters; Phil Bernstein on the increasing footprint of architecture in the digital age; an interview with Gensler’s Art Gensler, Walter Hunt, Diane Hoskins, and David Gensler; an interview with SHoP’s Christopher Sharples; and Catherine Ingraham on being safe from monsters, for now. Cover of Perspecta 40 (2008).
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UD742 - MUD Thesis Project: Frenzy of the Digital: Shadow Markets for Participation by Alexandra Rees (@john_mcmorrough and @nazmeevaa, Co-Advisors). In today’s urban sphere individuals find themselves perpetually on and in display. Their daily activities caught in the crosscurrents of a contemporary tension explored in ‘Frenzy of the Digital’—a tension that navigates the delicate balance between visibility and discretion within our digital and physical urban landscapes. Our urban spaces are consumed by visual, textual and communication overlays, hybridizing these physical and virtual worlds, yet leaving the everyday citizen open to regulatory scrutiny and oversight. How does this affect individuals’ willingness to communicate and participate in this society? In ‘Frenzy of the Digital,’ this thesis examines the impact of pervasive surveillance and display in urban spaces on individuals’ willingness to communicate and participate in society, particularly within informal markets. It explores the tension between visibility and discretion in a culture where digital shadows, consisting of various informational traces, are ubiquitous. Focused on creating stable spaces of belonging amid constant surveillance, this research also examines the implications of unregulated markets for communication. Highlighting the enduring power of human connection, the thesis sheds light on the physical and virtual overlays shaping contemporary spaces. It addresses the heightened impact of privacy invasion on individuals in the shadow economy, exploring strategies to evade scrutiny. Ultimately, the research envisions cities within the shadow economy, unraveling the dynamics of this tension and offering insights into the future of participation and communication in the digital shadow.
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A Thing or Two This exhibition was a showcase of faculty research but also a collection of fragments, experiments, tools, and questions that emerged from the TVLab over the past two years. A snapshot of processes in motion, evidence of an ongoing engagement with visualization, pedagogy, and the hybrid conditions that define our time. I've been working to lower the threshold of access to technology not just through tools but through programming and now see the lab as a platform for critical engagement, one that did not simply showcase technological fluency but where we ask what these tools do and what they might obscure. The work in the exhibition reflected that ethos. It spanned media and scale, from speculative worldbuilding in workshops to the development of new workflows for faculty research to collaborations with visiting artists and practitioners. Some pieces came out of classes, others from research grants, and still others from one-off conversations that turned into something more... The exhibition included the following works: Gabriel Cuéllar and Athar Mufreh, Virtual Reality Encounters with Spatial Regulation John McMorrough, Julia McMorrough, Jon Rule, and Ana Maciel-Pollares, Model Shots / Ames Room Cyrus Peñarroyo, Holding Pattern Jose Sanchez, Minga Other works in the exhibition came from my ongoing projects at the TVLab. A huge thank you to the research assistants who helped bring them to life. The next few posts will take a closer look at those pieces. Research Assistants Hassan Berry Ryan Britain Holly Chang Chu Ngoc Minh Dang Shane Herb Shillpa Kumar Ranya Liu Martin Rodriguez Varun Vashi Photographer Dori Sumter @umich.taubmancollege @umich.m.arch.taubman
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Photographs from the recent Arabia Interrotta symposium on April 10, organized by 2024-25 Garofalo Fellow, Zehra Ahmed, and moderated by John McMorrough and Zehra Ahmed. Featuring Ahmad Al-Jallad / Amale Andraos / Hussam Dakkak / Ziad Jamaleddine / Ali Karimi / Charlotte Malterre-Barthes / Pascal Menoret / Faysal Tabbarah. A big thank you to our panelists and students for a stimulating day of conversation! #uicsoa #zehraahmed #arabiainterrotta
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Arabia Interrotta Once home to the earliest cities and organized forms of cultivation, the region known as the Arab East (Al Mashriq) is today host to a diverse and contradictory spatial production. Here, archaeological sites, folk architectures, and monuments of empire intermingle with extralegal settlements, low-rise high-density sprawl, stylish office towers, artificial islands, and luxury desert resorts. Underlying this simultaneous collapse of ‘past’ and ‘future’ is the relatively recent shift in the locus of cultural production from the once-vibrant urban centers of Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and Beirut to the super-rich and relatively sparse nations of the Arabian peninsula (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Oman). This symposium examines the implications of this shift and anticipates alternative futures by reclaiming the region's spatial, material, and symbolic practices as sites for a renewed architectural imagination. Curated and organized by Zehra Ahmed, 2024–25 Douglas Garofalo Fellow at the UIC School of Architecture. Thursday, April 10 Architecture + Design Studios Room 1100 845 W. Harrison Street Chicago, Illinois, 60607 This symposium is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the UIC School of Architecture and the UIC College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts (CADA). The Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of individual and corporate donations, as well as grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
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TVLab has turned two. In institutional terms, it’s infancy. In experimental terms, it's reached a moment that benefits from reflection. A threshold. To mark the occasion, an exhibition: A Thing or Two. The initiative is shaped—decisively—by @ishanpal13 His work has made TVLab less a site of production than a structure for thinking with others. The inaugural cohort of TVLife Grant recipients demonstrated that spatial media, when untethered from spectacle, can serve as critique: – Gabriel Cuéllar and Athar Mufreh, Virtual Reality Encounters with Spatial Regulation – John and Julia McMurrough, Jon Rule, Ana Maciel-Pollares, Model Shots / Ames Room – Cyrus Peñarroyo, Holding Pattern – Jose Sanchez, Minga The project continues, now in partnership with R+CP. Thanks to Kathy Velikov and Gabriel Harp for facilitating the structure that allows this to proceed. Following a peer review process, the next cohort: – Zain AbuSeir, Broadcasts of Entangled Phantoms – Angela Cho, Vapours and Vertices – Tess Clancy, Augmented Apparitions – Wes McGee & Alireza Fazel, AI-Driven Bidirectional Extended Reality Framework for Human-Robot Collaboration TVLab is supported by research assistants at Taubman College, whose contributions are essential: Hassan Berry, Ryan Britain, Holly Chang Chu, Ngoc Minh Dang, Shane Herb, Shillpa Kumar, Ranya Liu, Martin Rodriguez, Varun Vashi. TVLab remains small. But oh the possibility.
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As soon as Adam Smith and I paid off our student loans, we began to pay it forward through the Architecture Student Research Grant. It’s been our small way of inspiring the next wave of founders and collaborators in the built environment. “The ASRG program serves as a bridge between coursework and professional work while still offering guidance and support from the university,” Sauvé says. “It’s a great way for students to build their entrepreneurial endurance and determine whether they want to continue down that path and start their own venture.” https://taubmancollege.umich.edu/portico/2024/11/19/bridge-to-the-future/
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Latergram from our Diploma Review Days Summer 24 . Location: I oA Square 1. Floor - Institute of Architecture (IoA) Oskar Kokoschka Platz 1 1010 Vienna . Students: Studio Díazmoreno- Garcíagrinda: Maret Gremmelspacher, Petr Malásek Studio Lynn: Naomi Neururer, Eylül Içgören, Chieh-Hsuan Chen, Natalia Laskovaya, Zubin Tan, Tomaž Roblek, Arkadii Zavialov Studio Jacob: Louis Braunger, Olja Radovanovi, Kyryll Dmytrenko, Sharon Sarfati, Mohamed Abdelhady Omar, Soroush Naderi, Alexandra Terekhova, Nikita Ponomarev, Oliver Thomas Hamedinger, David Kipp Jury: Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén García Grinda, Greg Lynn, Sam Jacobs, Baerbel Mueller, Wolf Mangelsdorf, Tulay Atak, Petra Gruber, Mathias Boeckl. . External jury guest: John McMorrough @john_mcmorrough . @dieangewandte @studio_diazmoreno_garciagrinda @studiolynn @studio_jacob_ioa Photos by Moritz Pfister @the.mobii . #StudioLynn #studiolynn #studiojacob #architecturedotstudio #studiodiazmorenogarciagrinda #masterofarchitecture #architecturestudent #instituteofarchitecture #vienna #academia #architecture #angewandte
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FINAL REVIEWS Monday, 17th of June 2024 . Beastly Palaces .   The summer semester studio díazmoreno garcíagrinda will be dedicated to investigating the intersections between the constructions and environments consciously made by humans, and the spaces we share and interact with other species. In particular, those that attempt to transcend the purely utilitarian character to create a space of mutual benefit, in which to dissolve the exploitative situations created by the imbalance of power between species. Through a combination of theoretical inquiry, critical contextual study and investigation, design exploration and material research, students will engage with the definition of an artificially materialised space or medium, that aims to shelter an existing or emerging biocenosis, or a mutually conditioned community of species sharing a habitat, which includes humans are one of the inhabitants. We therefore intend to revisit the spaces of real interaction between different species, and to examine the role of architecture in such relationships, and how speculating on new types of interspecies relationships leads us to rethink the way we understand and design our spaces. . Invited Guests: John McMorrough @john_mcmorrough, Ben Reynolds @pa.lac.e , Lorenzo Perri @_lemonot . @ioa.angewandte @dieangewandte #drawingarchitecture #architecturelovers #architecturephoto #architecturephotography #urbanism #architectureschool #digitalart #virtuel #architecturemasters #architecturestudent #architecture #dieangewandte
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“Town / House: Kwong Von Glinow Ardmore House,” DOMa (10): 108-9. It is an honor to write about the work of @kwongvonglinow for publication @doma.archi - a practice and journal committed (as am I) to the continuing possibilities of architecture as built form. #town #house #architecture
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#nonidenticalthesis #taubmancollege some pics of today’s thesis review! 🎓
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