C100 Asian American Career Ceilings: Achieving Success in Architecture

Committee of 100

Asian American Career Ceilings Initiative

March 27, 2023 Webcast

▦ Topic: “Asian American Career Ceilings: Achieving Success in Architecture”

▦ Speakers:

• Mark Lee, Chair of the Department of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design and founder/partner of the architecture firm Johnston Marklee

• Calvin Tsao, founder/partner of the architecture firm of Tsao & McKown and Committee of 100 member

▦ Moderator: Peter Young, CEO, Young & Partners and C100 Member

▦ Time: 4:30 pm EST, March 27, 2023, followed by a networking session

This webinar will be the twenty-fourth in a series of events convened by the Committee of 100 that examine the challenges facing Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans with regard to barriers to advancement in a wide variety of professions in the U.S. and related topics. The goal of this initiative is to contribute to the already significant efforts of organizations and individuals who have been tackling this issue.

This event will feature two leading Asian American architects who will talk about their careers, what they perceive as the barriers to advancement for Asian Americans in the architecture field today and in the future, where they see architecture heading, the extent to which the situation may be different depending on what part of the industry you are in or the type of company, and their advice to the attendees about how to succeed professionally as an Asian American.

The interview will be conducted by Peter Young, Committee of 100 member and Chair of the Committee of 100 Asian American Career Ceiling Initiative. The webinar will be one hour long, including 10 to 15 minutes of questions from the audience.

▦ Speaker Bios:

Mark Lee

Mark Lee is the Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard GSD and a principal and founding partner of the Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee. Lee has also taught at Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the Technical University of Berlin, and ETH Zurich. He has held the Cullinan Chair at Rice University and the Frank Gehry International Chair at the University of Toronto.

Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized internationally with over 50 major honors and awards. Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning fourteen countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent projects include the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas; a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the new UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California; and the design of the new Dropbox global headquarters in San Francisco. Current projects include: a renovation and expansion of the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University in Orange, CA; the renovation of the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center; and the renovation of the Hauptbau at the Kunstmuseum Basel, in collaboration with Christ & Gantenbein.

Publications on Johnston Marklee include House Is a House Is a House Is a House Is a House (Birkhauser, 2016), 2G N. 67 (2014), El Croquis N. 198 (2019), and A+U N. 614 (2021). Johnston Marklee’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Architecture Museum of TU Munich. Together with partner Sharon Johnston, Mark was the Artistic Director of the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Calvin Tsao

Graduating from UC Berkeley before receiving his Master of Architecture from Harvard University, Tsao forged his own path by founding Tsao & McKown in 1985 with his partner and fellow classmate, Zack McKown. Calvin has orchestrated the building of environments across a variety of scales and locales with current projects including the reconfiguration of the National Palace Museum of Taiwan – plus additions, and in Atlanta, working with a university and their private partner to develop a community of 3,000 residences, half of which are designated to be affordable.

Other significant works include the Sunbrella Headquarters in Burlington, NC; Sangha, At One Hotel in Suzhou, China; the renovation of the Jewish Museum permanent collection in New York, Brower Park Library in Brooklyn, Jianfu Palace Museum in The Forbidden City, Beijing, Suntec City in Singapore, as well as product design: a lipstick case for Shu Uemura.

Tsao envisions his role as that of a cultural mediator striving to harness global experience and technology in order to express the essence of local cultures and contexts. He has taught at the Harvard GSD, Cooper Union, Syracuse University and Parsons School of Design. He serves as the current board Chair of The American Academy in Rome, the former Vice President for Design Excellence at AIA New York | Center for Architecture, the President Emeritus and board member of The Architectural League of New York and, is a current member of Committee 100. Along with his partner, Zack McKown, Tsao received the 2022 AIANY Medal of Honor and in 2012 was a recipient of the National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, as well as the Legacy Award from the Museum of the Chinese in America, to name a few.

▦ Moderator and Chair of the C100 Asian American Career Ceiling Initiative:

Peter Young, CEO and President, Young & Partners and Committee of 100 Member

The Committee of 100

The Committee of 100 is a non-profit, non-partisan leadership organization of prominent Chinese Americans in business, government, academia, and the arts founded 34 years ago.

The Committee’s purpose is to provide leadership and act as a constructive force in the dual mission of:

• Promoting the full participation of all Chinese Americans in American society and acting as a public policy resource for the Chinese-American community;

• Advancing constructive dialogue and relationships between the peoples and leaders of the United States and Greater China.

To learn more about the organization, please go to https://www.committee100.org. You can reach the headquarters office at 212-371-6565.

COMMITTEE OF 100 | Ensuring Full Inclusion in America, Advancing U.S.-China Relations

Office: 6 St. Johns Lane, New York, New York 10013

Mailing: Committee of 100, Church Street Station, PO Box 3504, New York, New York 10008

T: (212) 371-6565 | F: (212) 371-9009