William O'Brien Jr.

William (Liam) O'Brien Jr. is Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Architecture Program at MIT. He is Principal of WOJR: Organization for Architecture. From 2018 to 2022 he was also the Design Director of Samara, the design and manufacturing company begun at Airbnb. He is the recipient of the 2012-2013 Rome Prize Fellowship in Architecture awarded by the American Academy in Rome. He has been named a Fellow by MacDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire, a Civitella Ranieri Fellow in Umbria, Italy, and a Socrates Fellow by the Aspen Institute. He was awarded the 2011 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers. He has taught previously at  University of California Berkeley as the Bernard Maybeck Fellow and was the LeFevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at The Ohio State University. Before joining MIT, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught advanced theory seminars and design studios in the graduate curriculum. Liam pursued his graduate studies at Harvard GSD where he was the recipient of the Department of Architecture Faculty Design Award.