Jennifer Bonner of MALL Named a Winner of 2019 League Prize for Young Architects + Designers

Jennifer Bonner of MALL was named one of this year's recipients of The Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers. Each year, The Architectural League announces six firms as winners of the award, which spotlights young, innovative North American architects and designers.

Haus Gables, 2019. Photo by Tim Hursley

In 2019, a jury of architects and design professionals selected the winners in a portfolio competition around the theme “Just,” or architecture’s unique ability to address social concerns and engage a wide range of mediums, geographies, and inhabitants.

As an architect and designer, Bonner is interested in reinventing materials, hacking typologies, and playfully reimagining everyday architectural elements from gable roofs to brick facades. In 2009, she founded the firm MALL, which stands for Mass Architectural Loopty Loops or Maximum Arches with Limited Liability—an acronym with built-in flexibility. Most recently, she completed a ground-­up residential project in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. The 2,200-­square-­foot home, Haus Gables, is one of only two residences in the country made of cross­-laminated timber (CLT), an exceptionally strong wood material produced by gluing together layers of lumber that alternate in direction. Inventively, a cluster of six gable roofs establishes the structure’s angled floor plan, while large asymmetrical windows and pops of pattern and color activate the lofty, luminous interior.

Haus Gables, 2019. Photo by NAARO

As part of the 2019 League Prize program, Bonner will speak about her practice in New York City on Thursday, June 20 at 7:00 pm among other League Prize winners including Mira Hasson Henry of Henry Architecture (HA) and Cyrus Peñarroyo of EXTENTS.

The lecture will take place at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center Parsons School of Design / The New School Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York. NY. Admission is free for League members and $10 for non-members. Space is limited. Reservations recommended.

Additionally, she will be included in a June exhibition alongside the prize's five other winning firms: Mira Henry, Henry Architecture; Cyrus Peñarroyo, EXTENTS; Rachel G. Barnard, Young New Yorkers; Virginia Black, Rosana Elkhatib, and Gabrielle Printz, Feminist Architecture Collaborative; and Gregory Kahn Melitonov, Taller Ken.

Haus Gables, 2019. Photo by NAARO

Jennifer Bonner founded MALL, a creative practice for art and architecture, in 2009. MALL stands for Mass Architectural Loopty Loops or Maximum Arches with Limited Liability—an acronym with built-in flexibility. By engaging “ordinary architecture” such as gable roofs and everyday materials, Bonner playfully reimagines architecture in her field.

Born in Alabama, Bonner is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Master in Architecture II Program at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. As a recipient of the AIA Atlanta Emerging Voices Award, Progressive Architecture (P/A) Award and Next Progressives (Architect Magazine), her creative work has been published in architectural trade journals including Architect, Architectural Review, Architectural Record, and Wallpaper, as well as more experimental publications including ​a+t,​ ​DAMN, ART PAPERS, PLAT, Offramp, and MAS Context​. She is author of ​A Guide to the Dirty South: Atlanta and a recent guest editor for ART PAPERS​. Bonner has exhibited work at the Royal Institute of British Architects, National Building Museum, WUHO gallery, HistoryMIAMI, Yve YANG gallery, pinkcomma gallery, Istanbul Modern Museum, Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway, and Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Haus Gables, 2017

The Architectural League of New York nurtures excellence in architecture, design, and urbanism, and stimulates thinking and debate about the critical design and building issues of our time. As a vital, independent forum for architecture and its allied disciplines, the League helps create a more beautiful, vibrant, innovative, and sustainable future. 

Office Stack, 2019. Rendering by Glenn Marquardt.

Domestic Hats, 2014. Photo by Patrick Heagney