The University of Virginia announced that it has chosen Ila Berman as the next dean of its School of Architecture. She will begin her new assignment on August 15.
Currently, Dr. Berman is principal of SCALESHIFT design in Toronto and also serves as a tenured professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Earlier, she was associate dean of the School of Architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans and director of architecture at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
In accepting the appointment as dean, Dr. Berman stated that “I believe that new collaborative models of interdisciplinary research, teaching and practice are necessary to respond to the many forces – be they social, technological, environmental, urban or economic – that are dramatically changing the contexts within which we are operating, and that design, in its capacity to literally ‘remake the world,’ is a critical part of this endeavor. I am very much looking forward to building upon the strong foundation of the school and the tremendous opportunity, as we approach its centennial, to lead it into its second century of design education.”
Dr. Berman is a graduate of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where she finished at the top of her graduating class. She holds a master’s degree in design studies and a doctorate in architectural history, theory, and criticism from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.