William O’Brien Jr.

The studio

William O’Brien Jr. is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and is principal of an independent design practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His research and creative practice have been fostered by an interest in the relationships between architecture, technology, landscape, and urbanism with an emphasis on the development of alternative resonances between natural and artificial systems.

He has taught previously at The University of California Berkeley as a Bernard Maybeck Fellow and was the LeFevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at the Ohio State University. He was also Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin where he taught advanced theory seminars and design studios in the graduate curriculum. O’Brien pursued his graduate studies at Harvard University, where he was the recipient of the Master of Architecture Faculty Design Award. Prior to graduate school, he attended Hobart College, in New York where he studied architecture and music theory and was the winner of the Nicholas Cusimano Prize in Music. After completion of his graduate work, he travelled to Austria and Germany as the recipient of the Hayward Prize for Fine Arts Traveling Fellowship in Architecture, sponsored by The American Austrian Foundation. He has been named a MacDowell Fellow by the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. His recent publications include essays in Log Journal, and ACADIA re:Form().