Today, The American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture named Deborah Berke, FAIA, as the 2022 recipient of the AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education, the highest honor given to an educator in architecture. Since 1976, AIA and ACSA have been conferring this award on individuals for their demonstrated dedication to the education of and their influence on students of architecture.
Berke holds a B.Arch. and a bachelor’s degree and honorary doctorate in fine arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as a master’s degree in urban design from The City University of New York. In 1982, she founded her New York practice Deborah Berke Partners, which has since designed the Richardson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo, N.Y., multiple 21c Museum Hotels nationwide, and the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Conn. After teaching at Yale University since 1987, Berke became the first female dean of the Yale School of Architecture in 2016, where she has been widely praised for increasing financial aid and fostering equity, diversity, and inclusion, which she outlined as part of her mission as incoming dean in a 2015 interview with ARCHITECT: “I am interested in the profession of architecture reflecting the population, what the population looks like.”
“Her stewardship in this way takes meaningful steps to close the wealth gap, diversify, and enrich the profession,” Billie Tsien, AIA, partner of the New York–based firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects,wrote in a letter supporting Berke’s nomination.
Yale School of Architecture courtesy Deborah Berke Partners
Berke addressing Yale students in front of the Yale Building Project in 2017.
“Deborah has not only played a critical role in welcoming new faces to the school and to the profession, she has also proven herself an intellectual leader, advocating a point of view that has done much to counteract the navel-gazing theories of recent architectural pedagogy. Her studios and seminars, imbued with what she describes as ‘the architecture of the everyday,’ reflect a fundamental humanity she brings to all her work,” wrote Robert A.M. Stern, FAIA, the 2017 Topaz recipient and 1998–2016 dean of the Yale School of Architecture, in his nomination letter.
In 2012, Berke was the inaugural recipient of the University of California at Berkeley’s Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize. In addition to authoring numerous academic books, white papers, articles, commentaries, and critiques—many of which focus on adaptive reuse—Berke edited Architecture of the Everyday (Princeton Architectural Press, 1998) and published House Rules: An Architect’s Guide to Modern Life (Rizzoli, 2016). The book outlines her eight principles for enriching domestic spaces as defined by her firm’s residential design work.
Chris Cooper courtesy of Deborah Berke Partners
Deborah Berke Partners completed the Rockefeller Arts Center at SUNY Fredonia, N.Y., in 2017.
At Yale, Berke continues to focus on sustainability, equity, urbanism, and the future of cities as key to the School of Architecture’s interdisciplinary agenda.
“Through Deborah’s leadership future architects, planners, and designers will share the same backgrounds of the various people coming together in urban environments who will need to function as mediators to convey the nuances of the different groups that have been traditionally separated by various socioeconomic factors,” Michael Marshall, FAIA, NOMA, NCARB, design director and principal of Michael Marshall Design, wrote in his nomination letter. “Deborah had already proactively sought out ways to rectify the lack of diversity in our profession, even before the most recent cultural events surrounding Black Lives Matter, through outreach to myself, as an African American and others in our profession years ago to develop pathways for a diverse group of students to attend Yale.”
The jury for the 2022 Topaz Medallion comprised Chair Danielle McDonough, AIA, Cambridge Seven Associates Inc., Cambridge, Mass.; Ila Berman, Assoc. AIA, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.; Scott Cornelius, AIAS, Oklahoma State, Stillwater, Okla.; Rodolphe el-Khoury, University of Miami School of Architecture, Coral Gables, Fla.; Kirk Narburgh, FAIA, King + King Architects, Syracuse, N.Y.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
