Michael J. Bell

Sen. Michael Bell is Professor of Architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Bell is founding Chair of the Columbia Conference on Architecture, Engineering and Materials, a multi-year research program hosted at GSAPP in coordination with Columbia’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK) at the University of Stuttgart. Bell served as Director, Master of Architecture, Core Design Studios, (2000-14) and the Coordinator of the GSAPP Housing Design Studios (2000-11).

Bell’s architectural design has been commissioned and exhibited by The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Venice Biennale; the Architectural League of New York; the University Art Museum, Berkeley and has been shown in museums and galleries in Europe, Mexico and China. Architectural design by Bell is included in the Permanent Collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His Gefter Press / Binocular House is included in American Masterwork Houses of the 20th and 21st Century by Kenneth Frampton. Bell has received four Progressive Architecture Awards. Books by Michael Bell include Engineered Transparency: The Technical, Visual, and Spatial Effects of Glass; Solid States: Concrete in Transition; Post-Ductility: Metals in Architecture and Engineering; Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture and Engineering; 16 Houses: Designing the Public’s Private House; Michael Bell: Space Replaces Us: Essays and Projects on the City; and Slow Space. Bell is the editor of a monograph on the architecture of Stanley Saitowitz.