Sharon Haar
Sharon Haar, FAIA, NOMA, ACSA is Professor at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. In addition to her current position, she has taught and held academic leadership positions at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Parsons School of Design and served as visiting faculty at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.
Her current research investigates the development of equitable, affordable housing in the United States through Taubman College’s Collective for Equitable Housing (CEH), which she co-founded in 2021. The CEH brings together architecture, urban design, and urban planning faculty at Taubman College to promote housing equity within the state of Michigan and beyond. By leveraging faculty expertise, funding, and community-based partnerships, they pursue research questions and impact-driven projects. Continuing projects investigate the intersection of higher education and urban space, with a focus on the changing nature of the university campus, as well as the study of architectural practices devoted to social activism and humanitarian relief. Professor Haar’s books include: The City as Campus: Urbanism and Higher Education in Chicago and Schools for Cities: Urban Strategies. Her articles and book reviews appear in journals including the Journal of Architectural Education, the Journal of Planning Education and Research, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Architect’s Newspaper, and Architectural Design, among others. She has contributed chapters to books including: The Urban Ecologies Reader, Embodied Utopias, Shanghai Transforming, and On Location: Heritage Cities and Sites. She has presented her research in conferences and lectures across the United States, Latin America, Asia, and Europe. She teaches in the areas of urban housing, social activism in architecture, and pedagogical/institutional space.
Professor Haar is the recipient of numerous grants from institutions including the Graham Foundation, Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Fannie Mae Foundation, National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and American Architecture Foundation. She is also the former Reviews Editor for the Journal of Architectural Education and has chaired symposia for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and the Mayors’ Institute on City Design. She serves on the Board of the Architects Foundation and served as the ACSA President in 2022-2023.
She received her Bachelor of Art from Wesleyan University and her Master of Architecture from Princeton University.