Dr Jennifer Ferng
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Dr Jennifer Ferng

PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; MArch, Princeton; BArch, Rice University; BA, Rice University; GCert HigherEd, University of Sydney
Program Director, Bachelor of Design in Architecture (Honours) and Master of Architecture
Phone
+61 2 9351 5914
Address
G04 - Wilkinson Building
The University of Sydney
Dr Jennifer Ferng

Jennifer Ferng is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Sydney. She teaches M.Arch studios and B.DesArch/M.Arch honours seminars. Her research examines how environmental and humanitarian histories from the eighteenth century onwards have impacted contemporary issues related to the climate crisis and the forced displacement of asylum seekers and refugees.

Her edited books include Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks (2021); Drawing Climate: Visualising Invisible Elements of Architecture (2021); Land Air Sea: Architecture and Environment in the Early Modern Era (2023). Her current monograph Corporate Ethics and the Architecture of Asylum addresses how multinational contractors who build detention centres in offshore sites are complicit in violating human rights. She currently serves as the pre-1800 reviews editor for Architectural Histories.

She welcomes enquiries from prospective honours, MPhil, and PhD students interested in working on questions of early modern European architecture, architectural and environmental history, Asia Pacific migration and labour.

Eighteenth-century European architecture and the earth sciences

Forced displacement and migration across the Asia Pacific

Environmental and humanitarian histories

Vulnerable communities impacted by climate change

ARCH4007 Critical Thinking in Architecture

MARC5010/5020 Architecture Studio 1 and 2

ARCH4010 Architecture Dissertation

Corporate Ethics and the Architecture of Asylum

Critical Carbon: Crisis and Conservation in Asia's Built Environment (with Future Anterior and Columbia University)

Complexities and Contradictions: Monumental Imaginaries in the Hunter Valley (with Sydney Environment Institute and University of Edinburgh)

Architectural Histories / Open Library of the Humanities

Asia Pacific Architecture Collective research group

European Architectural History Network (EAHN)

Society of Architectural Historians (SAH)

Melbourne University Press, Asia Law and Society book series

2023 Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) Collaborative Grant (with Daniel Ryan)
2022 Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) Best Article Award (shared with Jiat-Hwee Chang, Erik L’Heureux, and Daniel Ryan)
2021 Visiting Research Fellow, University College London, Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS)
2018 Visiting Scholar, Harvard Asia Center, Harvard University
2017-2018 Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship in Inter-Asian Contexts
Architecture
Project titleResearch student
From “Ngurra-on-City” to “Ngurra-as-City”: Reimagining Parramatta's Urban Development for Dharug SovereigntyStefenie LAI

Publications

Edited Books

  • Ferng, J., Jacobi, L. (2023). Land Air Sea: Architecture and Environment in the Early Modern Era. Netherlands: Brill.
  • Cannady, L., Ferng, J. (2021). Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks. Liverpool: Voltaire Foundation: Liverpool University Press.
  • Ryan, D., Ferng, J., L'Heureux, E. (2021). Drawing Climate: Visualising Invisible Elements of Architecture. basel: Birkhauser. [More Information]

Book Chapters

  • Ferng, J. (2024). Latent Histories of Manus Island. Catharina Gabrielsson and Marko Jobst, Instituting Worlds: Architecture and Islands, (pp. 75-87). London: Routledge. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2023). The Pneumatic Institution. In Blaine Brownell (Eds.), The Pandemic Effect: Ninety Experts on Immunizing the Built Environment. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.
  • Ferng, J. (2022). Climatic Privilege and Transnational Labor in Singapore. Accumulation: The Art, Architecture, and Media of Climate Change, (pp. 257-266). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Journals

  • Ferng, J. (2022). Critical Carbon Crisis and Conservation in Asia’s Built Environment. Future Anterior: journal of historic preservation history theory and criticism, 19(1), iii-xii. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2022). Review of Yuriko Furuhata, Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control. Leonardo, November 2022. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2021). Book review: Provisional cities: cautionary tales of the Anthropocene. The Journal of Architecture, 26(3), 425-429. [More Information]

Edited Journals

  • Ferng, J. (2022). Special Issue: Critical Carbon, Summer 2022. Future Anterior: journal of historic preservation history theory and criticism, 19(1).

Conferences

  • Ferng, J., Maalsen, S. (2018). Settlement Communities: Projecting Affordable Housing for Refugees in Footscray, Melbourne. Association for the Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), Denver: ACSA Press.
  • Ferng, J. (2016). Criminality and Public Opinion: Architectural Reformation among Parisian Prisons, 1778-1799. European Architectural History Network Meeting 2016, University College Dublin: UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy.
  • Ferng, J. (2014). Out of the Earth: Primitive Monuments between Prehistoric and Gothic Ambitions. European Architectural History Network (EAHN) Third International Meeting, Torino: Politecnico di Torino.

Textual Creative Works

  • Ferng, J. (2013). Making of Geology in late-Georgian England. Dissertation Review, Posted on 25/09/2013 in Science Studies, (pp. 1 - 3). San Francisco, United States of America: Prof. Thomas Mullaney / Stanford University.
  • Ferng, J. (2013). Reassembling biomaterials and modes of praxis. Architecture Australia, Vol 102 No 3, (pp. 65 - 66). Melbourne, Australia: Architecture Media Pty Ltd..
  • Ferng, J. (2012). Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity: Art, Opera, Fiction, and the Proclamation of Modernity. Leonardo Reviews, October 2012, (pp. 1 - 2). San Francisco, CA, United States of America: Leonardo/ ISAST.

Exhibitions / Events

  • Ferng, J., Begg, S. (2013). Emergen/city - Dirt, Dust and Ruins. Sydney, Australia: Tin Sheds Gallery.

Magazine / Newspaper Articles

  • Ferng, J. (2014). Regenerative architecture, Aussie style, competes on a global stage. The Conversation.

Other

  • Blanciak, F., Ferng, J. (2014), Rock Solid, MUSE Issue No. 08, pp.22-24.

2024

  • Ferng, J. (2024). Latent Histories of Manus Island. Catharina Gabrielsson and Marko Jobst, Instituting Worlds: Architecture and Islands, (pp. 75-87). London: Routledge. [More Information]

2023

  • Ferng, J., Jacobi, L. (2023). Land Air Sea: Architecture and Environment in the Early Modern Era. Netherlands: Brill.
  • Ferng, J. (2023). The Pneumatic Institution. In Blaine Brownell (Eds.), The Pandemic Effect: Ninety Experts on Immunizing the Built Environment. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.

2022

  • Ferng, J. (2022). Climatic Privilege and Transnational Labor in Singapore. Accumulation: The Art, Architecture, and Media of Climate Change, (pp. 257-266). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Ferng, J. (2022). Critical Carbon Crisis and Conservation in Asia’s Built Environment. Future Anterior: journal of historic preservation history theory and criticism, 19(1), iii-xii. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2022). Review of Yuriko Furuhata, Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control. Leonardo, November 2022. [More Information]

2021

  • Ferng, J. (2021). After Deconstructivist Architecture. In Duanfang Lu (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Architectural History, (pp. 127-139). New York, NY: Routledge. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2021). Book review: Provisional cities: cautionary tales of the Anthropocene. The Journal of Architecture, 26(3), 425-429. [More Information]
  • Cannady, L., Ferng, J. (2021). Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks. Liverpool: Voltaire Foundation: Liverpool University Press.

2020

  • Ferng, J., Ryan, D., Chang, J., L'HEUREUX, G. (2020). Climatic Design and Its Others. Journal of Architectural Education, 74(2), 250-262. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2020). Post-Zoom: Screen Environments and the Human/Machine Interface. Architectural Theory Review, 24(2), 207-210. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2020). Refugee Space-Time. Inflection: Journal of the Melbourne School of Design, 7, 114-121.

2019

  • Anderson, S., Ferng, J. (2019). Data displacements: Transmitting digital media and the architecture of detention. In Anoma Pieris (Eds.), Architecture on the Borderline: Boundary Politics and Built Space, (pp. 57-76). Abingdon: Routledge. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2019). Online Review of Timefulness: How Thinking like a Geologist Can Help Save the World. Leonardo, February 2019.

2018

  • Hochhausl, S., Lange, T., Exo Adams, R., Barber, D., Doucet, I., Forster, K., Bierig, A., Cupers, K., Ferng, J., Krivy, M., et al (2018). Architecture and the Environment. Architectural Histories, 6(1), 1-13. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2018). Multinational Contractors as Border Watchmen. Asia Global Online, 18 October 2018, 1-4.
  • Ferng, J., Maalsen, S. (2018). Settlement Communities: Projecting Affordable Housing for Refugees in Footscray, Melbourne. Association for the Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), Denver: ACSA Press.

2017

  • Ferng, J. (2017). 'Stones of use': Cobalt, Spar and the Utility of Architectural Materials. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40(3), 399-420. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2017). Evidentiary Earthquakes: Design and Discontinuity through Seismic Methods. Leonardo, 50(2), 152-159. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2017). Penrith Lakes: Staging Landscape Artifice and Aboriginal Heritage in Western Sydney. Change Over Time, 7(1), 74-94. [More Information]

2016

  • Ferng, J. (2016). Criminality and Public Opinion: Architectural Reformation among Parisian Prisons, 1778-1799. European Architectural History Network Meeting 2016, University College Dublin: UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy.
  • Ferng, J. (2016). Monstrosity and Excess in Jean-Jacques Lequeu's Visionary Architecture. Fabrications, 26(1), 4-26. [More Information]

2015

  • Ferng, J. (2015). Earthly Revelations. Architectural Theory Review, 20(1), 1-6. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2015). Elemental Vernacular: Designing Beyond Human Authorship. Architectural Theory Review, 20(3), 291-295. [More Information]
  • Ferng, J. (2015). The Pulse of Modernism: Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Si ècle Europe by Robert Brain Reviewed by Jennifer Ferng. Leonardo.

2014

  • Ferng, J. (2014). Out of the Earth: Primitive Monuments between Prehistoric and Gothic Ambitions. European Architectural History Network (EAHN) Third International Meeting, Torino: Politecnico di Torino.
  • Ferng, J. (2014). Regenerative architecture, Aussie style, competes on a global stage. The Conversation.
  • Blanciak, F., Ferng, J. (2014), Rock Solid, MUSE Issue No. 08, pp.22-24.

2013

  • Ferng, J., Begg, S. (2013). Emergen/city - Dirt, Dust and Ruins. Sydney, Australia: Tin Sheds Gallery.
  • Ferng, J. (2013). Making of Geology in late-Georgian England. Dissertation Review, Posted on 25/09/2013 in Science Studies, (pp. 1 - 3). San Francisco, United States of America: Prof. Thomas Mullaney / Stanford University.
  • Anderson, S., Ferng, J. (2013). No Boat: Christmas Island and the Architecture of Detention. Architectural Theory Review, 18(2), 212-226. [More Information]

2012

  • Ferng, J. (2012). Quartz. In Helene Prigent, Philippe Grand (Eds.), 1740 un abrege du monde, (pp. 197-205). Lyon, France: Fage Editions.
  • Ferng, J. (2012). Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity: Art, Opera, Fiction, and the Proclamation of Modernity. Leonardo Reviews, October 2012, (pp. 1 - 2). San Francisco, CA, United States of America: Leonardo/ ISAST.

2011

  • Ferng, J. (2011). Nineteenth Century Thoughts on Systems of Nature: Geological Theories, Artistic Representations, and Technical Expertise. Passepartout, 31, 63-78.

Selected Grants

2022

  • Climatic Imaginaries Exhibition, Ferng J, Ryan D, Sydney Environment Institute/Collaborative Grant

2019

  • Crossing Legalities: Inter-Asia Sovereignty, Borders, and Infrastructures, Ferng J, Kingsley J, Lee K, Social Science Research Council (USA)/Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship