Ronit Eisenbach: Architect, Professor and Installation Artist

A faculty member 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. Through 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 teach a series of situation-based, design-build studios that frame elements of architecture such as light, color, space, and shadow.

Her installations and maps have been exhibited both here 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, was recently recognized with an Honorable Mention by ID magazine. Articles about her installations, Placing Space and Fast Forward, Play Back will soon appear in the Journal of Architecture Education.

Current projects include a co-authored book, Installations by Architects (with Dr. Sarah Bonnemaison); and the design of new skylights and light-modifying infrastructure for the University of Maryland’s School of Architecture, Planning, & Preservation.

In recent years her 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, and the University of Michigan Arts of Citizenship program.

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