Born and raised in the Bronx, John Hejduk spent most of his life and career in New York City. A graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Hejduk believed that architectural practice should be infused with critical thought, and that the foremost function of a building should be its ability to comment on the history and current state of the discipline.

Hejduk's contributions to "paper architecture," or purely theoretical exercises in form and space, earned him a place in The New York Five, a moniker derived from Five Architects, a 1972 catalogue featuring Hejduk's work, along with drawings by four other new architects, published by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Hejduk's built work included Cooper Union's Foundation Building in New York and Kreuzberg Tower in Berlin. His design for Wall House #2, originally conceived in 1973, was realized posthumously in 2001. (Originally intended for a site in Connecticut, the building is located in Groningen, the Netherlands.)