Bruce Mau

Bruce Mau, one of design’s most innovative thinkers and engaging speakers, and a 2007 AIGA medalist, returns to the Wexner Center to speak about his latest projects and initiatives. Mau is the Creative Director of Bruce Mau Design Inc. and the founder of the Institute Without Boundaries, a studio-based postgraduate program.

His firm has collaborated on a wide range of projects, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Seattle Public Library, Netherlands Architectural Institute, and Zone Books. Mau’s latest undertaking is Massive Change, an ambitious exhibition/book/on-line forum, whose objective is to start a global movement of people committed to supporting a new vision of sustainable life on the planet.

Bruce Mau studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, but left prior to graduation in order to join the Fifty Fingers design group in 1980. He stayed there for two years, before crossing the ocean for a brief sojourn at Pentagram in the UK. Returning to Toronto a year later, he became part of the founding triumvirate of Public Good Design and Communications. Soon after, the opportunity to design Zone 1|2 presented itself and he left to establish his own studio, Bruce Mau Design, Inc. Bruce remained the design director of Zone Books until 2004 since that first publication, to which he has added duties as co-editor of Swerve Editions, a Zone imprint. From 1991 to 1993, he also served as Creative Director of I.D. Magazine.

In 1995, Mau collaborated with celebrated architect Rem Koolhaas in 1995 to create S, M, L, XL, a 1300-page award-winning compendium containing projects and texts generated by both Mau and Koolhaas. From 1996 to 1999, Bruce Mau was the Associate Cullinan Professor at Rice University School of Architecture in Houston. He has also been a thesis advisor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design; artist in residence at California Institute of the Arts; and a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He has lectured widely across North America and Europe, and currently serves on the International Advisory Committee of the Wexner Center.

Additionally, Mau is the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation in 1998, the Toronto Arts Award for Architecture and Design in 1999, and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in 2001. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Ontario College of Art and Design and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art.

Cosponsored by Ohio State’s Department of Industrial, Interior, and Visual Communication Design and the Knowlton School of Architecture.