We@UIC: Judith De Jong, "The Spatially Loose Metropolis: Observations from Brazil"
Wednesday, April 10, 1pm
1100 A + DS
Judith De Jong explores urban design and collective life in the context of “spatial looseness” through projects by Roberto Burle Marx in Rio de Janeiro and Lina Bo Bardi in São Paulo.
Judith K. De Jong is an architect, urban designer, and principal of De Jong Urban Projects, whose work investigates the reciprocating relationships between architecture and the city, and the opportunities for design innovation in architectures and urbanisms of mass culture. Her book, New SubUrbanisms, is available from Routledge.
Forthcoming work includes “Revisiting Uptown: Four Observations on Density,” in CITE: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston, #104; “The Shopping Mall: City within a Suburb,” in The Interior Urbanism Theory Reader; and “The Graphic Urban Ground,“ in About Streets.
De Jong has received support from the Graham Foundation, UIC, and the Great Cities Institute, where she was a Faculty Scholar, and has presented her work in the US and abroad. She has written for MONU, CITE: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston, Land Forum, and The Journal of Architectural Education, among others, and her proposal “How the Strip Mall Can Save Suburbia” was a finalist in the Build A Better Burb competition.
De Jong’s interest in the future of the Netsch Campus at UIC, combined with her role as Associate Dean of CADA from 2014-2022, produced a pair of exhibitions at Gallery 400, co-curated by Lorelei Stewart, and led to the University’s 2019 international design competition for a Center for the Arts at UIC, won by OMA/KOO. In 2020, she won a national ACSA Creative Achievement Award for her Netsch Campus work.
Prior to UIC, De Jong practiced with firms in State College, PA., Houston, TX., Cambridge, MA., and Chicago, IL., contributing to work including affordable housing, media facilities, industrial labs and officing, high-rise housing, higher education, and large scale urban design and planning projects in the U.S. and South Korea.