John Reynolds stands with his students in front of Fallingwater, a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Pennsylvania (submitted photo).

By Margo Kissell, University Communications and Marketing

John Reynolds, professor of Architecture, is the recipient of Miami University’s 2022 E. Phillip Knox Distinguished Teaching Award.

The award recognizes faculty members who demonstrate creative, innovative, and engaging teaching methods at the undergraduate level.

After nearly 30 years of teaching in the Department of Architecture + Interior Design, Reynolds continues to approach each new teaching assignment “with the same high level of enthusiasm and creativity that he has modeled throughout his Miami career,” a nominator wrote.

“He engages his students in real world, outside-the-classroom problem solving; models himself as a learner and his students as teachers; and exemplifies the teacher-scholar by blending his scholarship and his teaching in carefully constructed classroom activities.”

Revised the Master of Architecture curriculum

Reynolds joined Miami in 1987 and was promoted through the ranks to professor of Architecture. As director of Graduate Studies from 2001-2010, he took the lead in implementing multiple changes that have raised the profile of both the program and its students. 

“He completely revised the Master of Architecture curriculum in 2004, anchored in a unique requirement for a written thesis as a precursor to the more conventional design thesis,” a nominator wrote.

The written thesis was submitted in the form of a conference paper for presentation at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) national conference in competition with Architecture faculty around the country. An impressive number of master’s candidates have had their papers accepted for presentation at ACSA, the nominator wrote.

Teaching recognized nationally

Reynolds received the Collaborative Practice Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in 2004 for “best practices in school-based community outreach programs.”

In 2006, he was the sole recipient of the College of Creative Arts Curry Distinguished Educator Award.

He has been nominated multiple times for Miami’s Distinguished Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award and Associated Student Government’s Effective Educator Award. In 2012, Miami’s then-President David Hodge cited Reynolds’ work with students at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water in Bear Run, Pennsylvania as an example of engaged learning.

Most recently, Froebel USA has come to Miami’s campus to film Reynolds and his students use of Wright’s “Froebel blocks” as a teaching tool in the classroom. This documentary film project is being pitched in a series of episodes to PBS or Netflix and includes interviews with some of the top architectural educators in the country.

He has been proactive in getting students placed at the top architectural graduate programs in the country, including Yale, Harvard, Columbia, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Cornell.

One nominator, who earned her Master of Architecture from Columbia, said she benefited from Reynolds’ teaching when she was an undergraduate at Miami.

“A student of John’s automatically becomes part of this community of learners; we inspire each other and pay attention to what others are doing,” she wrote. “His studio’s award-winning project for the National Center for Migration History in Luxembourg caught my attention in 2004 when I was curator at Frank Wright Lloyd’s Fallingwater, and I invited John to bring his students to design furniture for Fallingwater’s Servant’s Sitting Room, now used as a break room by tour guides.”

Reynolds cultivates a supportive learning environment that brings out the best in his students, wrote a nominator who has partnered with Reynolds over 10 years through the Fallingwater Design Studio as its former curator of Buildings and Collections and now its director.

“His teaching empowers students to explore and challenge their personal identities through inquiry, discovery, and experimentation while always respecting their individual talents and unique ways of learning.”

Another nominator from the Centre for Human Migration in Luxembourg wrote that Reynolds was involved in a multi-year partnership with the centre, Miami University John E. Dolibois European Center and the Department of Architecture + Interior Design.

“We could observe how carefully he led his students to the practice of real-world problem solving,” he wrote, noting that included dealing with the sponsors, the community, administration or prominent outside reviewing architects.

A focus on active, experiential learning

Reynolds said he strives to enhance active, experiential learning and critical thinking and support the voices and perspectives that comprise culturally diverse and inclusive teaching.

He encourages risk-taking that engages the student’s whole academic, social and emotional self within teaching, learning and design contexts, and advances the design studio inquiry model both as creative activity and to inform teaching and learning contexts, local and global, while engaging and fostering community-based partnership.

“My teaching focuses on active, experiential learning through student engagement with the instructor and affected community while inclusive of the diverse voices, ideas, and forces that shape architectural theory and design,” Reynolds said.

“Whether in large lecture, seminar, or design studio courses, the intent is to engage students with their world and understand their role as ‘citizen architects’ concerned not only with high quality design of aesthetic import but directly contributing to communities, both local and global, and human well-being.”

Knox Award

Established by Miami alumnus E. Phillips Knox ('68), the award is presented to faculty members whose achievements unequivocally merit recognition for excellence in teaching along dimensions such as learning through inquiry and experimentation; awareness and appreciation of cultural diversity; or active participation in experiential learning and community partnerships.  

Award winners receive a professional expense allocation of $3,000.