Mina Chow, FAIA, NCARB, is an award-winning interdisciplinary filmmaker, licensed architect, Adjunct Professor at the USC School of Architecture, where she currently teaches design and professional practice, and a Faculty Fellow at USC Annenberg Center on Public Diplomacy. She is the founder of multimedia firm mc² SPACES which creates original films about the fundamental nature of design. Through her filmmaking, public scholarship, and interdisciplinary teaching, Mina Chow communicates important underlying relationships between design and culture. She has written on identity and cultural issues between media and architecture including for The Architect’s Newspaper’s “Suspended in a Spectacle: Public Diplomacy at Expo 2020 Dubai,” “With the Media Burning and a Virus Raging, Should We Look to Architecture?” and “Delinquent in Dubai: We Need to Tell America’s Best Story in the Middle East.”
In 2021, she was elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects for outstanding public service and documentary filmmaking. Since 2018, she's served as a design history consultant for the U.S. Department of State Expo Unit. Her 2022 PBS documentary “FACE OF A NATION: What Happened to the World’s Fair?” continues its impact including recent citation in Smithsonian Magazine and international screenings on Emirate Airlines ICE, and at the 2022 International Communications (ICA) Conference in Paris. The film connects the erosion of the country’s international image to the decline of U.S. participation at overseas World Expos. It is recognized by the U.S. Department of State Expo Unit website.
She has directed and produced films for the American Institute of Architects, and the University of Southern California. In 2014, she directed USC School of Architecture's "100 Years of Architecture" short film. In 2011, she also created a web pilot BRAVE NEW WORLD for the LA Mayor’s office about innovative architecture for the city of Los Angeles. Select awards include an Individual Grant for the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the California Architectural Foundation, the USC Architectural Guild, USC US-China Institute, and the USC Ambassador's Fund. She was also on the award-winning U.S. Pavilion team "Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good" at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.
