Toshiko Mori is the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and was chair of the Department of Architecture from 2002 to 2008. She is principal of Toshiko Mori Architect, which she established in 1981 in New York City. Mori taught at the Cooper Union School of Architecture from 1983, until joining the Harvard GSD faculty with tenure in 1995. She has been a visiting faculty member at Columbia University and Yale University, where she was the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor in 1992.
The work of Mori's firm has been widely published and has received awards and prizes internationally. Mori designed the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Energy and Environmental Systems, a research center for a federation of more than a dozen institutes and corporations that promote energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality. In 2008 the design won a Project Honor Award from the AIA New York City Chapter. The project is nearing completion and is seeking LEED Platinum certification.
Other current work includes public projects for New York City's Department of Design and Construction and for the Department of Parks and Recreation, an institutional projects for Brown University, a master plan for New York University, as well as residences in New York, Massachusetts, Taiwan and Mongolia.
Mori's strong research-based approach to design has been commended in awards and invitations to lectures and exhibitions around the world. Mori's work was included in the exhibition, "Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006," at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. In the fall of 2005, her work was exhibited in "Renewing Wright" at the Heinz Architectural Center of the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh. Her profile, "Postscripts: Building on Sacred Ground," appeared in The New York Times in May 2005, and she has edited a volume on material and fabrication research, Immaterial/Ultramaterial. A monograph of her work, Toshiko Mori Architect, was published by Monacelli Press.
In 2003 Mori was awarded the Cooper Union Inaugural John Hejduk Award. In 2005, she received the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Medal of Honor from the AIA New York Chapter. Her design for an addition to a Paul Rudolph house in Florida received a 2008 Award of Excellence from the New York State AIA. The Eleanor and Wilson Greatbatch Pavilion, a visitor center for Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin House, received a 2009 Honor Award from the Buffalo/Western New York AIA. She has served on the board of trustees of the Van Alen Institute and the Storefront for Art and Architecture, and has been an advisor to the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is currently an advisor to A+U Magazine and serves on the President's Council for the Cooper Union. She is Vice-Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Design for the World Economic Forum.
Mori earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Cooper Union and an Honorary Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University.
Photo by Yanai Yechiel