James Wines is the founder and president of SITE, an environmental art and architecture studio chartered in New York City in 1970. He is a graduate of Syracuse University School of Art (1957) where he majored in sculpture and art history. He served as the Chairman of Environmental Design at Parsons School of Design (1984 to 1990) in New York and as a Professor of Architecture at Penn State University (1999 to 2017). Prof. Wines’ educational philosophy advocates ‘integrative thinking’ as a means of including multi-disciplinary and contextual ideas from outside the design professions.

He has written seven books on art and design, including
• ON SITE-ON ENERGY-Scribners & Sons 1974,
• DE-ARCHITECTURE-Rizzoli International 1987
• GREEN ARCHITECTURE-Taschen Verlag 2000.

His creative work is based on a site-specific response to surrounding contexts. He has designed more than one hundred and fifty buildings, public spaces, landscapes, performance events and environmental art works for private and municipal clients in eleven countries. He is the recipient of the Smithsonian Institution’s 2013 National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement, the ANCE Annual Award for an International Architect (Italy 2011) and the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation (USA 1995). In 2019 Prof. Wines was honored by the Hirshhorn Museum’s annual Artist X Artist Award. He is also the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kress Foundation, American Academy in Rome, Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Graham Foundation and Ford Foundation. In 2020 there was a retrospective of his drawings for SITE at the Tchoban Architecture Museum in Berlin. Prof. Wines continues to work on international art and design projects, write essays, lecture and engage in educational programs based on a wide variety of environmental topics.