Taubman College Dean Monica Ponce de Leon announced the promotion of Mireille Roddier to associate professor of architecture, with tenure. Roddier is an energetic and effective studio teacher at the undergraduate and graduate levels. This speaks to her versatility in conveying a full range of conceptual and speculative subject matter. It also reflects her ability to address both beginning and advanced technical skills in representing architectural ideas. She has also been the primary coordinator and lecturer for Design Fundamentals 2, which is a focused introduction to architectural theory that prepares students for more advanced theoretical explorations at the graduate level. Her ability to intertwine representation techniques with social and political concerns is valued by her colleagues and by her students.
Roddier’s research and creative work includes both design practice and publications on architectural theory and criticism. She aims to keep these research and creative interests in balance by transcending distinctions among the various forms of production. Her impact on the discipline is most apparent through her design practice.
As a designer, Roddier’s work has been conducted in collaboration with Keith Mitnick and Stewart Hicks, her partners in the design firm MRH. Together, they have completed one built house, one permanent garden pavilion, several temporary garden installations, and entered numerous competitions. Their work has garnered awards and received significant attention in a wide number of publications.Three of their temporary installations have resulted from prize-winning competition entries. In addition in 2005, MRH was one of ten design firms selected by Architectural Record for the annual feature “Design Vanguard” and in 2004 they were selected as one of six firms in the annual Young Architects Forum of the Architectural League of New York.
Roddier developed her book, Lavoirs: Washhouses of Rural France, from work done as the recipient of the Gabriel Prize, awarded by the Western European Architecture Foundation. Her study of this obsolete building typology reveals her interest in the relationships among formal geometrical constructions and central projection, phenomenology and perception, as well as the underlying social and historical significance of these structures.
She was a Sanders Fellow at the college in 2001-2002.
