Autumn 2026 programs

Autumn 2026 Baumer Lecture Series
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.

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.

All lectures are free and open to the public. The Baumer Series invites prominent researchers and practitioners of architecture, landscape architecture, and city and regional planning to present their work and to engage subjects both topical and enduring.

New Knowlton leadership
Frank Jacobus named Director of the Knowlton School: Architect, designer, artist, and educator Frank Jacobus has been named the director of the Knowlton School at The Ohio State University. His four-year term began July 1.

With 19 years of experience in higher education, Jacobus was previously head of the Department of Architecture in Penn State University’s Stuckeman School and associate department head in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. He is recognized by the American Institute of Architects and is co-principal of SILO Architecture, Research and Design, an award-winning practice known for its expressive and resourceful work. Published works include Architectonics and Parametric Thinking, Artificial Intelligence Architecture: New Paradigms in Architectural Practice and Production, The Making of Things: Modeling Processes and Effects in Architecture, and more.

Visiting faculty
Knowlton is pleased to announce that the following visiting faculty will join the school.

Ruo Jia
Visiting Assistant Professor. 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.

Andy Polefrone
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.

Exhibitions in Knowlton Hall’s Banvard Gallery
The Thunder is Loud and Rolling
August 25–October 16

This exhibition traces the evolution of this relationship between ground and sky in southern Lebanon to illuminate how cosmic literacy persists as both a site of interpretation and a practice of worldmaking, shaping new attachments to land even as it is shaped by the violence of conquest.

Yeah, they were All Yellow: Asian Feminist Architectural Possibilities
November 2–February 26

It can be said that “Asian,” or “Feminist,” or “Architectural” are all non-existent signifiers of “initial problems,” but ones that are very present and possible. Yet together, as three moving anchors in relation to each other, “Asian-Feminist-Architectural” forms a relatively coherent and stable triangulation where concrete material experiences can be gathered by certain specific moving identities. 

The exhibition opening will be accompanied by a public roundtable event with Ruo Jia, Lilian Chee, Nahyun Hwang, Samuel Hellman, and Iman Ansari.