A Message from Dean Berke

Fall 2024

Dear Friends,

In addition to welcoming 225 students to Rudolph Hall at this start of the 2024-2025 academic year, I am very pleased to welcome our faculty back to campus. This group of architect-educators, practitioners, historians, theorists, and academics enables the Yale School of Architecture to provide the most dynamic education and training. Several of this year’s faculty are teaching at Yale for the first time while others have taught generations of Yalies.

Alec Purves, BA 1958, M.Arch 1965, now professor emeritus, continues to teach and is co-leading the undergraduate Introduction to Architecture course with senior critic Trattie Davies, BA 1994, M.Arch 2004. Always a proponent of hand drawing, Purves’s own artistic work was celebrated this past spring in the exhibition, On Looking, and his sketch books demonstrated the importance of taking pen and pencil in hand at every stage of learning. I hope if you traveled this summer you took your sketchbook with you!

Other courses you may find interesting include Introduction to Architectural Robotics led by lecturer Hakim Hasan; Bad Buildings: Decarbonization Through Reuse, Retrofit, and Proposition with critic Tess McNamara, M.Arch 2018, MEM 2018, and Race and the Built Environment with Jordan Carver, KPF Visiting Scholar, to name but a few. These and other courses expand the ways we look at and think about architecture.

This year’s Advanced Design Studio faculty continue to address the global view of the program. I’m happy to welcome back 2022 Pritzker Laureate Francis Kéré as the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor, for his third time teaching with newly appointed associate dean and senior critic Martin Finio. Alumni Issa Diabaté, M.Arch 1995, and Ma Yansong, M.Arch 2002, who have both built global practices, are teaching Advanced Design Studios for the first time at YSoA this fall. As these and other practicing architectures return to Yale, it reinforces for our students the power of teaching and of giving back to the next generation at all stages of your career.

Several members of our faculty are taking advantage of sabbaticals this fall. Keller Easterling, the Enid Storm Dwyer Professor, is using a Yale ASCEND grant to pursue the ATTTNT project on reparation land trusts with Morgan State University and to work on her next publication, Trust Land; Anthony Acciavatti, the Diana Balmori Assistant Professor, has a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome continuing his reach on groundwater in India; and Elihu Rubin, BA 1999, the Henry Hart Rice Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies, is using a MacDowell Colony Fellowship to finish a book.

One of the ways in which we give back and look to the future of the profession is through our Professional Practice courses. Taught for many years by Phil Bernstein, BA 1979, M.Arch 1983, deputy dean and professor adjunct, this course is now led by lecturer Susana La Porta Drago, with visitors from the field who impart real world experiences. Mentoring and networking are key, and I thank all of you who do this through our Cross Campus mentoring matches each semester and those who do this informally. Cross Campus also offers peer-to-peer mentoring because we are never too old to learn, and you can always count on Yale alumni to generously share.

Students are getting hands-on experience throughout the school’s course offerings. The Yale Urban Design Workshop, now led by Andrei Harwell, M.Arch 2006—who was mentored by the UDW’s founding director, professor Alan Plattus, BA 1976—is celebrating its 30th anniversary of community engagement with the local Dwight neighborhood. The Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, led by Senior Critic Adam Hopfner, M.Arch 1999, who was mentored by Paul Brouard, marks its 58th year as a YSoA institution and its second year of collaboration with the Friends Center for Children, producing housing for its early childhood educators. The Building Lab, led by Senior Critic Alan Organschi, M.Arch 1988, which carries forth the ethos of Charles Moore, is partnering with other parts of Yale to conceive and construct regenerative buildings as multi-semester laboratory experiments. The Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (CEA), led by Anna Dyson, M.Arch 1996, the Hines Professor of Sustainable Architectural Design, and assistant professor Mae-ling Lokko, supports a growing roster of PhD architectural science candidates, post-docs, and M.Arch students who want to find sustainable solutions for the field.

Who were your mentors at Yale? Who would you like to toast? Click here to share your word of thanks to a Yale faculty member or classmate who has made a lasting impact on you or make a gift in their honor. We’ll share the comments with them.

I would like to thank and toast all of you who continue to be an important part of our Yale community. Thank you for keeping in touch, attending in-person and virtual programs, and organizing reunions. Thank you for mentoring one another and our students. Thank you for supporting the school with your gifts that allow us to expand the impact. And thank you for being an example of a Yale education and representing YSoA within the field and the world.

Sincerely,

Deborah Berke

Edward P. Bass Dean and J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture