Jeannette Kuo to judge the 2025 AR House awards

Jeannette Kuo is co-founding partner of Karamuk Kuo, based in Zurich, and professor of architecture and construction at the Technical University of Munich.

Established in 2010 with Ünal Karamuk, Karamuk Kuo focuses on the intersection of spatial concepts with constructive technologies to approach architecture from its most fundamental sources. ‘The practice’s work is simple, undramatic, but clever to an extreme,’ wrote Jessica Bridger in the AR when Kuo was shortlisted for the Moira Gemmill Prize in 2019.

Karamuk Kuo’s house in Zollikon was shortlisted for AR House 2021.

Credit: Rory Gardiner

The office works on projects of a range of scales, from educational facilities to cultural projects to multifamily housing. The large house, containing five units, they designed on a sloped terrain in Zollikon was shortlisted for the AR House awards in 2021. Recognition for this multifamily home in the Zurich suburbs was ‘a great signal to the client and community that there are ways to build more densely without changing the character of the neighbourhood,’ says Kuo.

After studying at UC Berkeley, the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and ETH Zürich, Kuo received the Maybeck Teaching Fellowship at UC Berkeley in 2006. Since then, she has taught at MIT, EPF Lausanne, the GSD and Rice University. She has also edited two publications, A-Typical Plan in 2013 and Space of Production in 2015.

Launched in 2010, the AR House awards recognise originality and excellence in the design of dwellings. The house – a key rite of passage for architects – offers the potential for innovation and is critical to the ferment and crystallisation of new ideas.

Looking for projects built in the last five years, AR House recognises creativity and originality, and ideas that push the type forward whatever the scale and construction cost. Find out more about previous winners here.