Michelle Chang

Michelle Chang directs JaJa Co and teaches architectural design.

She founded her independent practice in 2014 after working in offices in New York, Boston, and San Francisco. Her design work experiments with the overlaps between and among film, installation, music, teaching, and building.

Chang holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard GSD and a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from Johns Hopkins University. She is a former MacDowell Colony Fellow, Wortham Fellow, and a recipient of the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, among other venues.

In her research, Chang studies the techniques and histories of architectural representation. Specifically, she investigates how optics, digital media, and modes of cultural production influence translations between design and building. Her recent writing on noise and vagueness examines these topics. Before coming to the GSD, she taught at Rice, UC Berkeley, California College of the Arts, and Northeastern University.

Education

• Master of Architecture (M.Arch.) Harvard University (2005 — 2009)
• Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) The Johns Hopkins University (2001 — 2005)

Companies

• Assistant Professor of Architecture Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2019)
• Director JaJa Co. (2014)
• Assistant Professor Rice University (2017 — 2019)
• Wortham Fellow Rice University (2015 — 2017)
• Lecturer UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design (2012 — 2015)
• Senior Lecturer California College of the Arts (2012 — 2014)
• Director DoA (Dept. of Architecture) (2012 — 2013)
• Junior Architect Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) (2010 — 2012)
• Architecture + Design Curatorial Intern San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2012 — 2012)