Leslie Johnson Leslie Johnson

Leslie Johnson (M.Arch. University College London Bartlett School of Architecture, B.Arch. Illinois Institute of Technology) is Associate Teaching Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture and design principal at —.

As a core member of the Teaching Faculty at IIT, Professor Johnson has developed and taught curricula in the Master of Architecture and Bachelor of Architecture programs, with particular focus on beginning design, dwellings and housing, the built environment of the Nordic region, experiential urbanism, and visual media. She also leads travel programs which have studied the interweaving of landscape, industry, and mythology in the built environment in Scandinavia, the architecture of participatory governance in Washington D.C., the layered narratives of urbanity in Rome and London, and communal and collective housing in Berlin. Professor Johnson currently coordinates the foundation studios of the Master of Architecture program and advises advanced B.Arch. and M.Arch. thesis students. Her students have won numerous awards, including the prestigious Schiff Foundation Fellowship from the Art Institute of Chicago, and have gone on to lead diverse careers and pursue multidisciplinary postgraduate studies. 

Professor Johnson’s many years of dedicated student-focused pedagogy has been honored with the Excellence in Teaching award from IIT. Professor Johnson’s professional projects, with Dirk Denison Architects (2000–2010), have been honored with awards from AIA Chicago and AIA National, among other accolades. She currently nurtures, with partner Lukasz Kowalczyk, applied haptics—an itinerant design/make practice that aims to elevate everyday spaces by exploring the poetics of practicalities. They especially enjoy making spaces for children, the most imaginative of spatial thinkers and placemakers.