Education

Harvard University, Graduate School of Design – Master in Architecture I (2018)
James Templeton Kelley Thesis Design Prize

Hanyang University, School of Design – Bachelor of Science in Interior Design (2010)
Hanyang Interior Thesis Design Prize, Cum Laude
 

Biography

Hyojin Kwon is an Assistant Professor in Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Architecture. She is also the founding partner of Pre- and Post-, a research-oriented design practice based in Boston and Seoul. Her recent research, teaching, and projects explore how digital media transforms not only the internal methodologies of the design fields but also broader cultural, environmental, philosophical, and socio-political contexts. She focuses particularly on the reciprocal relationship between digital media and physical artifacts shaping contemporary urbanism.

Kwon has previously taught at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania and has received prestigious awards such as the Irving Innovation Fellowship at the Harvard GSD, the MacDowell Residency, the ArtOmi Architecture Residency, and the Research Residency at the Autodesk Technology Center in Boston. She has given lectures and served on juries at several institutions, including Harvard, Yale, Penn, MIT, RISD, Sci-Arc, and UT Austin.

Previously, Kwon has completed installation projects for the Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane City Council in Australia, Tokyo Designers Week in Japan, CICA Museum, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, and Hanyang Artainer Museum in Korea. Her design work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Cambridge, Seoul, Brisbane, and Sydney. Prior to founding Pre- and Post-, she practiced in several offices in the United States and Australia, including Populous, OMA, SOM, MILLIØNS, and Certain Measures.

Kwon received a Master in Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she was awarded the James Templeton Kelley Prize for her thesis titled Death, Divorce, Down-sizing, Dislocation, and (Now) Display: A Self-Storage Center for a More Exhibitionist Future.

Statement of Teaching Interest

Professor Kwon teaches digital media as a cultural and material condition shaping contemporary architecture and urbanism. Her courses investigate how images, code, and fabrication protocols construct spatial, environmental, and political realities. Working through image-based workflows, computational logics, robotic assembly, and circular material systems, students examine how digital artifacts migrate into physical matter and public space. Her pedagogy treats computation and materialization as reciprocal forces—where media processes actively reorganize authorship, infrastructure, and civic imagination.

Statement of Research Interest

Professor Kwon’s research investigates architecture as a postdigital ecology in which digital media and material systems operate as a single field. Through circular material ecologies and experimental fabrication assemblies grounded in image-to-form translation, computational processes, material reuse, and robotic fabrication, she studies how feedback between computation and material behavior reorganizes architectural production. Her work situates these dynamics within broader socio-political and environmental structures, asking how digital infrastructures redistribute visibility, value, and surplus in contemporary urban life. Across scales—from prototype to civic installation—architecture becomes a site where media logic and material consequence converge.

Recent Scholarly Work

Selected Books & Edited Volumes

• Witt, Andrew; Hyojin Kwon; Eunu Kim; Gavin Ruedisueli. An Atlas of Urban Air Mobility. Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2022. ISBN 9798218011475.
• Kwon, Hyojin; Darby Fly; Julie Jiyoon Lim (eds.). Plastic Reimagined: Material Agency and Circular Design Studio Report. Georgia Institute of Technology, 2025.

Journal Articles

• Kwon, H., and Andrew Witt. “The Past Futures of the Aerotropolis.” Thresholds, no. 50, 2022.
  Conference Papers with Proceedings (Refereed)
• Kwon, H. “Plastic Reimagined: Local Material Networks and Speculative Pedagogies in Circular Design.” ARCC–EAAE International Conference, 2026. (Forthcoming)
• Kwon, H., and Darby Fly. “Pedagogies of the Plasticene: Material Agency and Civic Architecture.” 114th ACSA Annual Meeting, 2026. (Forthcoming)
• Kwon, H. “Pixels as Pedagogy: Reframing Color, Computation, and Authorship in Postdigital Architecture.” 114th ACSA Annual Meeting, 2026. (Forthcoming)
• Kwon, H. “Plastic Reimagined: Material Agency and Circular Design.” 44th ACADIA Conference, 2025. (Best Project Award)
• Kwon, H. “Transformative Pixels: Computational Color and Image Displacement in Generative and Representational Design.” 43rd eCAADe Conference, 2025.

Exhibitions

• Kwon, H. (2026). Exhibitionist Storage: Reimagining Civic Architecture through Self-Storage. Exhibition presented at the Interactive Media Zone (IMZ), Georgia Tech Library, Atlanta, GA.
• Kwon, H. (2025). Synthetic Ecologies: AI-Translated Matter in Architectural Media. Media digital art installation presented at the Media Bridge, Georgia Tech Library, Atlanta, GA.
• Kwon, H. (2025). Plastic Reimagined: Material Agency and Circular Design. Public art installation presented at Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA.
• Kwon, H. (2025). Plastic Reimagined: Material Agency and Circular Design. Public art installation presented at The Goat Farm Arts Center, Atlanta, GA.
• Robert, B. (Curator) (2025). Transport | Transform | Transcend: Innovations in Materials and Movements. Group exhibition presented at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Atlanta, GA. Works included: Ephemeral Instruments: Images as Architectural Media; Plastic Reimagined.
• Marcus, A.; Kudless, A. (Eds.) (2025). Drawing Codes: Experimental Protocols of Architectural Representation, Volume III. Group exhibition presented at the University of Houston, TX, and Tulane University, LA. Work included.
• Kwon, H. (2021). Crooked Captures. Solo exhibition presented at CICA Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea.
• Kwon, H. (2021). Art Must Go On: Ephemeral Furniture. Online exhibition presented by the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Seoul, South Korea.
• Kwon, H. (2019). Death, Divorce, Down-sizing, Dislocation, and (Now) Display. Solo exhibition presented at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (Dean’s Wall), Cambridge, MA.