Jeff Kipnis

Jeffrey Kipnis (born 1951, Georgia) is an American architectural critic, theorist, designer, film-maker, curator, and educator.

Not a registered architect, Kipnis first came to prominence through his association with Bahram Shirdel, and Peter Eisenman (and their joint collaboration with French philosopher Jacques Derrida).

Kipnis holds a master's degree in physics from Georgia State University, USA (1981), and in 2006, he was awarded an honorary diploma by the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, in recognition of his contributions to the discipline of architecture as a teacher, critic, and theorist.

Other honors include the AIA (Georgia Chapter) Bronze Medal for Service to Architecture (1985), a Professional Development Award from the Architectural Society of Ohio Foundation (1992), and an Ohio State University Distinguished Research Award (2005).

He was professor of architecture at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA, retiring in 2022.

He has been a visiting professor at Princeton University, New Jersey, Columbia University, New York, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, and a guest professor of Urban Strategies - a postgraduate program at the Institute of Architecture (IoA), University of Applied Arts Vienna (Angewandte Kunst).

During the 1990s he collaborated with the Iranian architect Bahram Shirdel on the design of influential projects such as the Scottish National Museum, Montreal Urban Design 1990-2000, and Place Jacques Cartier.

Kipnis taught at the Architectural Association from 1992 to 1995, where he was the founding director of the Graduate Design Program.

He also curates Architecture and Design at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.

As a critic he has written for many different periodicals, including Assemblage, El Croquis, Architectural Design, Harvard Design Magazine, Log, and Quaderns.

As a designer, Kipnis collaborated with architects Reiser + Umemoto (RUR Architects) on the Water Garden in Columbus, Ohio (which won a 1998 PA Design Award) and the Kansai-kan National Diet Library.