Faculty Directory

Jason Young is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan. He served as Coordinator for the Master of Architecture Thesis Sequence from 2000 through 2010, developing the Sequence from an option within the graduate curriculum to a requirement for all Master of Architecture candidates. Additionally, he teaches graduate level design studios and a graduate seminar on contemporary American urbanism, entitled SUB: situation urbanism bigbox. Since 2008, Young has been teaching and coordinating the new Master of Science Design Research (MS_DR) program. A two-semester, post professional program, the MS_DR explores the affiliations between institutions, urban territory, and contemporary digital culture. Students in the program pursue independent design research within a studio and seminar based curriculum that foregrounds cultural and architectural ideation while positing studio engagement as a research protocol.

Young holds a Master of Architecture from Rice University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology. In addition to teaching at the University of Michigan, he has also taught in the Summer Institute for Architecture at The Catholic University of America, and was a Visiting Professor at the Schwerpunkt Holz in Murau, Austria, an international architecture workshop.

A licensed Builder, Young was co-founder and partner of WETSU, a design +build practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan from 2000 to 2006. WETSU received an Honorable Mention in ID Magazine's Design Review in 2001, was recognized by Wallpaper* magazine as one of twenty-five notable emerging practices worldwide in 2003, received an Honor Award from Contract Magazine in 2005, and was awarded a 2006 Michigan AIA Award. In 2006, WETSU also mounted an exhibition of recent projects at Edge-Studio in Pittsburgh, at the Taubman College Gallery in Ann Arbor, and at the Elmaleh Gallery at the University of Virginia. In 2007, Young initiated YARD, an independent construction studio and design practice based in Ann Arbor. YARD trades size for involvement, and thinks twice about it.

Much of Young's academic research explores contemporary conditions of American urbanism. He was a contributing co-editor for Stalking Detroit (Barcelona: ACTAR 2001), an anthology of essays, projects, and photographs offering a thick, analytical description of the city of Detroit during the 1990s. Young has lectured on his urbanism research at the Detroit Institute of Art, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Wayne State University, University of Michigan, at the national conference of the American Studies Association, and at the XIX Congress of the International Union of Architects. Ongoing work includes two collaborative book projects: FieldTrips, which examines bigbox establishments and franchise space, attempting a cultural assessment of their potency; and an edited volume entitled, city building, that explores a number of contemporary urban themes through intensive analyses of single buildings and landscapes.