The Alabama-born Jennifer Bonner founded MALL, a creative practice for art and architecture, in 2009. MALL stands for Mass Architectural Loopty Loops, Miniature Angles & Little Lines, or Maximum Arches with Limited Liability—an acronym with built-in flexibility. MALL uses this acronym not to be quick or flippant, but because its architectural interests shift for each project. The practice is committed to projects that hack typologies, take creative risks, reference popular culture, and invent representation. Bonner is also Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Master in Architecture II Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Q > Tell us about your most unconventional project (even if it did not materialize).
A > I have a new project that is all about exterior elevations called Haus Scallop & Haus Sawtooth. You could call it a pair of “elevation houses”. There is an exuberant amount of walls, materials, and apertures, that are excessive, colourful, and bright. We are currently looking for a potential client and perfect piece of land to develop the two projects further. This project stemmed out of a research project by looking at Haus Lange & Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany.
Q > What’s something that few people know about you?
A > In 1997, I was voted “Best Personality” by classmates in my senior year of high school and I’m also pretty good at ping pong. LOL!
Q > What is the biggest mistake you’ve made?
A > I had the opportunity to build my first project at the age of 20 as a student at the Rural Studio. We built a 1,200 sq ft pavilion in a park on the Cahaba River in rural west Alabama. Later I worked for firms in London and Istanbul, went to grad school and started my own practice in 2009. The biggest mistake that I’ve made was to wait too long after starting my own practice to build. Haus Gables was built at the age of 39, nine years into practice. I’ve overcome the struggle of not being able to find a client in the early years of practice by taking on not only the design but also the development of my own projects.
Q > Tell us about a journey or place which triggered memorable emotions, a lingering impression or a strong sense of connection.
A > The rural south is magical. It’s full of kudzu-covered telephone poles and strange utilitarian building forms scattered throughout the landscape. For me, a drive through several southern states is enough to inspire a contemporary architecture project. Not through the lens of the “vernacular” which is a dated interpretation, but through material and formal obscurities. It’s not by accident that artists like William Christenberry returned to these places to photograph things like the “Green Warehouse” in Newbern, Alabama, or “Building with False Brick Siding” in Warsaw, Alabama, many times over several decades. In my own work, it’s like I’m trying to build Christenberry’s photograph in Haus Gables with the fake white brick façade. Borrowing, yet contemporizing these visuals is part of how I work.
Q > What patterns, routines or rituals define or help to shape your life and its rhythms?
A > Geographically, I’m all over the place. I teach on the East Coast with projects in Atlanta, Georgia. My family lives in Portland, Oregon and I lecture at schools of architecture all over the country in places like Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Muncie, Indiana. And when I’m not travelling for work, I like to travel to warm places like Los Angeles or Palm Springs. Given this schedule it is difficult to have a routine. But maybe travelling is my rhythm.
Q > What are you most afraid of?
A > Waking up and saying, what just happened to the past 5–7 years? Meaning, am I happy with the work I’m producing and maximizing my creativity? The ultimate fear is to get caught up in daily life stuff like taking my kid to ice skating practice, picking up groceries, etc, that my time is focused on mundane day-to-day rather than doing more fun and creative stuff. I’m terrified of normalcy.
Q > What’s the biggest challenge facing the architecture profession in America today and what should the response to this be?
A > Challenges in architecture are cyclical. One generation builds boring buildings, the next generation also builds boring buildings. There’s a housing crisis, then there is another housing crisis decades later. Not to diminish these events, but the cycle is constantly repeating. It seems to me that some architects should figure out non-conforming ways of working in an effort to hurl the discipline of architecture beyond the status quo and get away from a tendency to merely put out fires, in order to truly develop long-lasting interventions.
