Jennifer Siegal Biography

Jennifer Siegal is a leading voice in sustainable, modular, and off-site architecture, with nearly three decades dedicated to reimagining how adaptable systems can shape future environments. As founder of the Office of Mobile Design (OMD) in Venice and Ojai, California, she has pioneered prefabricated and mobile strategies that fuse industrial processes with site-sensitive innovation - offering resilient, flexible solutions to environmental and social challenges. Her work combines visionary thinking with technical precision, often anticipating needs and possibilities long before they enter the mainstream.

In 2018, Siegal became the first American woman to receive the International ArcVision Prize for Women and Architecture, recognized for her resilience-focused proposals in disaster recovery and community regeneration. Her speculative projects push architecture beyond conventional limits, addressing urgent global issues while expanding the field’s cultural and technical imagination.

Her distinctions and recognitions include inaugural Architect-in-Residence at the Chianti Foundation in Marfa, TX; fellowship residency at the MacDowell; first Julius Shulman Institute Fellow at Woodbury University; Emerging Voice recognition by the Architectural League of New York; Los Angeles AIA professional design awards; and ACSA teaching awards. A prolific contributor to architectural discourse, she is the author and editor of Mobile: The Art of Portable Architecture and More Mobile: Portable Architecture for Today, and the founding editor of Materials Monthly - all published by Princeton Architectural Press. A Loeb Fellow at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Master of Architecture graduate of SCI-Arc, where she was named Distinguished Alumna in 2009, she has taught architectural design, construction, and theory since 1995 at institutions including USC, Woodbury, ASU, UNC Charlotte, and the Taliesin Frank Lloyd Wright School.

In 2023, Siegal founded the Ojai Design Posse to mentor women in the design professions, and in 2025 she launched the Ojai Design Forum, building community and further advancing her commitment to cultivating innovation, leadership, and equity in the next generation of designers.