For the last 18 years, the husband-and-wife team of Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon have built a reputation for work that is innovative and socially engaging while also being conceptually rigorous. Believing design is an instrument for imagining and implementing change, their firm takes on atypical endeavors, including interactive landscapes, submersible structures, stone vaulting, and media projects.
The duo met in architecture school at Cornell in 1990 before marrying in 2002, launching their Boston-based firm three years later. Höweler cut his teeth with Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Kohn Pedersen Fox, while Yoon worked at Dean/Wolf Architects and launched a small practice called NY Studio. “It was a leap of faith to have a practice together,” Yoon admits. Their first project was a house, and “we had to figure it out together. It was great that we had each other because it’s scary starting a design practice and not knowing what you’re doing,” adds Höweler.
Located in Shanghai, the Moongate Bridge will be a cultural park with a series of rounded openings framing the water
In the early days, their philosophy was to say yes to everything. “We were also curious, so we didn’t know how to say no. Everything seemed interesting,” says Höweler. “There’s a sense of excitement to build a practice,” Yoon adds. “In many ways, the term ‘practice’ is particularly appropriate because you learn through iteration, making mistakes, and accruing knowledge as you go.”
Today, Höweler + Yoon is a dedicated group of 30 architects, designers, and researchers taking on projects that are focused on social good. Consider the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville. Designed by Thomas Jefferson as a “fantastic arrangement of architecture and landscape,” Höweler says, it was also a “campus designed and built by enslaved people. The architecture of Jefferson’s academic village was designed to produce an ideal society, but that ideal society was built on the backs of forced labor and an institution of violence.” The abstract granite ring embedded in the terrain is a place where people can gather, grieve, and respect their ancestors.
Offering an eye-level view of the Schuylkill River, the circular FloatLab is designed to connect Philadelphians and visitors with their natural setting
They are pushing that idea further with the Institute of Democracy facility, also at UVA, which explores what democracy means today and how architecture can play a role in the process, “not just in terms of imagery,” Höweler adds, “but also in terms of platforms that bring people together as a site of convening—as a space of debate.”
Their commitment to learning extends beyond their practice, with Yoon named the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and Höweler an associate professor in architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. “That’s the beauty of being in thesis because [the students are] teaching us all the time,” says Höweler. “It’s an incredible privilege.”
This article originally appeared in HD’s July 2022 issue.
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