The 2021 Herbert Baumer Memorial Seminars will focus on the work of Andrew Zago and Laura Bouwman, partners at Bouwman Zago.

Andrew Zago, founder and partner of Bouwman Zago, and has over twenty-five years of professional experience in architecture, urbanism, and education. In 1991, he established Zago Architecture in Detroit. Zago teaches at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and is the coordinator of their Visual Studies program. He is also a clinical professor at the School of Architecture, University of Illinois, Chicago. Zago is a recipient of both an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Fellowship Grant from the United States Artists organization. Notable projects include the Downtown Los Angeles offices of Arup, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and a design studio facility for Cornell University's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University.

Laura Bouwman is a partner at Bouwman Zago. She has been with Bouwman Zago since 2003 and is a licensed architect in the State of California and Michigan. Prior to Bouwman Zago Architecture, she worked in the Paris office of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Bouwman is currently the Howard A. Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice in Architecture in the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley, and has taught at the University of Michigan. Bouwman was project architect for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and has had a leadership role in other projects, publications, and design competitions. She studied architecture at MIT where she received both her Bachelor of Science and her Master of Architecture degrees, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and with the Imre Halasz Thesis Prize for her work.

As part of the Spring 2021 Baumer Conversations, the pair will engage with Knowlton faculty to discuss their work on Wednesday, March 24 at 5:30 p.m. The discussion will be broadcast live to the public on the Knowlton School's YouTube channel.

Since 1998, the Knowlton School has hosted the Herbert Baumer Memorial Seminars, a series of interactions between Knowlton students and seminal practitioners in architecture and related disciplines. Based on a significant amount of research, students lead a series of discussions that encourage visiting practitioners to position their work within a broader disciplinary context and to reveal their motivations and techniques. These interactions are recorded and transcribed and become the basis of the Source Books in Architecture Series.