Michael Jasper is an architect, educator, and scholar based in Australia. He is currently Professor of Architecture at the University of Canberra where he teaches in the major project studio and advanced architectural analysis streams. Immediately prior to joining the University, Jasper was a Partner at Cooper Robertson & Partners (2002-2011) a prominent New York architecture and urban design firm. Jasper is deeply engaged with higher education and the architecture profession locally, nationally, and internationally and has served on standing and ad hoc committees for the University of Canberra, including University Academic Board (2019-2020, 2015-2016), University Outside Studies Committee (2017),  and SAGE (Science in Australia Gender Equity) Athena SWAN, the University’s task force on gender equity (2016-2022), and across the Faculty of Arts and Design. He is a core Member of the Faculty’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research. He was Chair of a national working party (2015-2017) to develop and advocate for a new National Architecture Research Prize to be administered by the Australian Institute of Architects. He was Deputy Chair of the Institute's National Education Committee (2015-2021), the peak national advisory body on architecture education and research policies and accreditation procedures. He was Australian Deans of Built Environment & Design inaugural nominee to the five-person National Accreditation Management Committee (2017-2020) charged with reviewing and providing advice to the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia on the policies, procedures and implementation of new national accreditation procedures for Australian, New Zealand architecture programs.

He is a standing Panel Member for the national accreditation procedures for architecture programs Australia, New Zealand and served on the National Visiting Panels to RMIT (2016), UNSW (2017) and USW (2021). He is founding Director (2016 -) of the Alastair Swayn Foundation, a charitable trust dedicated to research in and advancement of Australian design and architecture. Jasper serves as a Detail Assessor for the Australian Research Council, a Commonwealth entity within the Australian Government and the primary source of advice to the Government on investment in the national research effort. He was an inaugural member of the National Capital Design Review Panel, the peak advisory group to the Australian Government and ACT Government on major development proposals in areas of significance in Canberra as Australia’s national capital.

EXECUTIVE ROLES

Between 2002 and 2011 Jasper was Partner in the New York architecture and urban design firm of Cooper Robertson & Partners where he directed many of the firm’s major urban design and complex architecture projects as Partner including completion of some 24 research reports for state and federal government and not-for-profit bodies leading to $4.8 billion in building and infrastructure policy outcomes.  Different from most commercial firms, Cooper Robertson focuses on government and institutional clients at policy formulation, strategic planning, program development, feasibility, and institutional planning phases. Brought into the firm and made Partner as part of a corporate succession plan, Jasper oversaw with other partners growth of the firm including doubling of architecture staff from 60 to 120 full-time salaried staff and commensurate growth to some 240 contracted sub-consultants, an office annual operating budget increase from $10 to $18 million USD, with annual billing including sub consultants of $35 million USD, and diversification of project type. His change management responsibilities extended to expansion of geographic reach resulting in assignments undertaken across the United States, and out to Canada, South America, several European Union countries, the Middle East, and Africa. With other partners, Jasper oversaw commensurate business systems growth in design, technology, marketing, human resource management, and finance.

At Cooper Robertson he held executive leadership roles in corporate management and marketing committees in addition to project director responsibilities on complex institutional, government, and urban scale projects. While at Cooper Robertson Jasper directed many of the firms major institutional and urban scale projects. His clients included mayors and government agencies as they sought to address aging infrastructure, poorly designed public realms, changing land use, and new cultural programs. He counts among his clients Baltimore Development Corporation, City of Detroit, City of Miami, City of Sarasota, and Washington DC Office of City Planning. He directed projects for university presidents and their boards as they sought to imagine and plan for their futures including Presidents Richard Levin, Yale University; Jean-Lou Chameau, California Institute of Technology; Lee Bollinger, Columbia University; John DeGioia, Georgetown University; Samuel Stanley, State University of New York at Stony Brook; Donna Shalala, University of Miami; Ronald Peterson, Johns Hopkins Medicine.

 RESEARCH

Professor Jasper is a specialist in 20th-century European and American architecture.  He approaches architecture as a conceptual and material enquiry and his international research achievements rest on a large portfolio of work that investigates three strands in architecture practice and theory. The first strand engages in the critical analysis and re-interpretation of modernist architectural discourses with a particular emphasis on the second half of the 20th century. The second focuses on theories of architecture composition at multiple scales and temporal settings: from individual buildings, to group form, to precinct and city scales. The third strand concerns the conceptualisation and delivery of complex architectural and urban scale projects. This research performance is expanded by contributions to the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge through his teaching in international and national settings and through academic and professional engagement activities. International and national refereed publications, grants, conference presentations, and committee work in peak bodies with national policy impact demarcate these contributions and ensure their impact.

He was Visiting Scholar (2021) in the City Futures Research Centre UNSW, Visiting Scholar (2015) at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, and Visiting Scholar (2019, 2013) at the American Academy in Rome. He has published extensively in the discipline’s peak academic journals and lectured broadly giving peer-reviewed papers in conferences in Abu Dhabi, Adelaide, Antwerp, Auckland, Brussels, Canberra, Copenhagen, Ghent, Helsinki, Launceston, Melbourne, New York City, Paris, Seoul, Stockholm, Sydney, Tampere, València, Venice, and Wellington. He is the author of Architectural Aesthetic Speculations, Deleuze on Art, Architectural Possibilities in the Work of Peter Eisenman, and Trajectories in Architecture.

He is currently working on several long-term projects including a revised account of modernist architectural knowledge, a history of the architectural plan as conceptual device, and investigations into resilient urban scale form with an initial focus on multi-unit housing,

TEACHING

Jasper’s teaching practice has been delivered in a body of work distinctive for its intellectual rigor, scholarly depth, and discipline impact. His teaching has been delivered through advanced architecture studios, major project urban-scale studios; advanced seminars in architecture formal analysis and composition. He has also led and taught in the professional practice and elective studies streams. Professor Jasper’s teaching develops translational knowledge across three domains: form generation, architecture knowledge, and complex urban-scale design.

In the period 2017-2019 his teaching received an averaged overall satisfaction with unit quality InterFace Student Experience Questionnaire score of 97%, well above the 78% UC average.

Starting in 2011, he has led the internationalization of the UC architecture program, initiating and securing funding for a series of postgraduate overseas research studios based in Beijing (2011, 2012), Venice (2014), and Tokyo (2015-). The Tokyo-based postgraduate unit celebrated its fifth consecutive year in 2019 and is now an established and distinguishing part of the curriculum, the program currently suspended due to COVID19 related travel restrictions. He was Master of Architecture Course Convenor from December 2015 to December 2021 and in that capacity led the course in the implementation of a revised curriculum from 2016 and over the national accreditation reporting period of Semester 2 2016 through Semester 1 2018. In the October 2018 national visiting panel review the University of Canberra’s Master of Architecture course received the best accreditation outcomes in the program’s history, receiving the maximum five-year accreditation with only modest (non structural) action items to address. He has contributed to delivery coordination of the undergraduate architecture course as Acting Discipline Lead Bachelor of the Built Environment (Architecture) 2019-2021.

Member of Climate Change Adaptation Resilience and Recovery Network