Ronit Eisenbach: Architect, Professor and Installation Artist

An Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, Ronit Eisenbach is an architect whose creative and scholarly efforts are located at the intersection of art and architecture.

Eisenbach employs design to generate discourse about the built environment. Through a practice that includes teaching, curating, exhibition design and the construction of temporary site-specific environments, she explores how the perception of subjective, invisible and ephemeral objects affects understanding and experience of place. An interest in thinking through making and refining perception has led her to develop a series of situation-based, design-build studios that frame elements of architecture such as light, color, space and shadow in conversation with human movement.

Eisenbach's installations and maps have been exhibited in the U.S. and abroad in venues such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Graham Foundation, the Cranbrook Art Museum, the Art Gallery of Windsor, Princeton University and the streets of Tel Aviv. She was the Design Architect for the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture Renovation Master Plan. Her design for the first phase of the renovation, the Ronald F. Titus Digital Studio garnered two AIA awards.

Her installation, "Mom & Me, Me & Jonah," was honored with an ACSA Faculty Design award, and "Detroit 300: Fast Forward, Play Back" received an Honorable Mention in ID magazine. Articles about "Placing Space" and "Fast Forward, Play Back" were published in the Journal of Architectural Education. "Sculpture at Evergreen 6: Simultaneous Presence," co-curated with Jennie Fleming, and "Memory House/Desire House" both appear in Public Art Review Spring/Summer 2010. Her installations and curated exhibitions have also been reviewed in the Washington Post and Metropolis.

In 2010, Eisenbach published, with co-author Dr. Sarah Bonnemaison, Installations by Architects: Experiments in Building and Design (Princeton Architectural Press). A film, "The Radiant Sun: designer Ruth Adler Schnee," co-produced with Terri Sarris, and an associated exhibition at the Kibel Gallery premiered at University of Maryland. In May 2010, "Sculpture at Evergreen 6: Simultaneous Presence," co-curated with Jennie Fleming, opened at Johns Hopkins University.

Eisenbach's creative and scholarly work has been supported by the Center for Creative Research, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, a University of Maryland Creative and Performing Arts Grant, the Great Lakes Fabricators and Erectors Association, the Graham Foundation, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the University of Michigan Arts of Citizenship program, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.

At the University of Maryland, she chairs the Kibel Gallery, teaches architectural design, and directs a general education undergraduate course, "Introduction to the Built Environment." She has served on the National Building Museum's Education Committee since 2005.