Michael Young is an architect and an educator practicing in New York City where he is a founding partner of the architecture and urban design practice Young & Ayata.

Michael is an Assistant Professor at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union where he has taught design in the third year and second year studios, and seminars investigating geometry, representation and fabrication. Additionally, he teaches in the core graduate design studio at Yale University, School of Architecture. Michael is also the co-coordinator of the Architectural Drawing & Representation II course at the GSAPP at Columbia University and Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University teaching geometry and representation. He was a Visiting Professor at Shih Chien University, Taipei, Taiwan (G)Hosting: Architecture Workshop, 2007, the Crete Technical University, Greece Eco-Redux Architecture Workshop in 2010, and the GSAPP Studio X summer workshop in Thessaloniki, Greece, 2011.

Michael received his Masters of Architecture from Princeton University where he was the recipient of the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize and the Howard Crosby Butler Traveling Fellowship in Architecture. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo including studies at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Consortium and the CVUT in Prague.

Prior to forming Young & Ayata, Michael worked for a number of award winning architectural firms in New York and San Francisco, including Reiser Umemoto, Stan Allen Architects, and Pfau Architecture. His professional experience includes cultural institutions, office towers, residential projects and experimental competition entries. Michael is a Registered Architect in the State of New York.

Michael’s drawings are part of the Drawing Center’s Viewing Program and have been shown nationally and internationally. In addition to teaching & practicing, he is invested in writing, research and experimentation on issues concerning geometry and sensation in relation to aesthetic discourse.