Zoë Ryan

Zoë Ryan is the John H. Bryan Curator of Architecture and Design and Chair of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her exhibitions include the forthcoming “Fashioning the Object: Bless, Boudicca, and Sandra Backlund” (2012), as well as “Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention” (2011), “Hyperlinks: Architecture and Design” (2010), “Konstantin Grcic: Decisive Design” (2009), and “Graphic Thought Facility: Resourceful Design” (2008). Prior to working at the Art Institute, Zoë was Senior Curator at the Van Alen Institute in New York where she organized numerous exhibitions, including “The Good Life: New Public Spaces for Recreation” (2006), and wrote and edited books on the design of public space.

Ryan is regularly called upon as a lecturer, critic, and juror, and her writing on architecture and design has been published internationally. She is the author of numerous books, most recently, Building with Water: Concepts, Typology, Design, published in 2010, and Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention, published in 2011.

She is an adjunct assistant professor at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she teaches an interdisciplinary design seminar.