Professor of architecture Robert E. Somol has been named the new director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Somol previously served as a professor in the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University and as a visiting professor at the Princeton School of Architecture. He also has taught design and theory at the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Rice University, Columbia University, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
Formerly a principal at Los Angeles architecture firm P XS, Somol also is an author and a contributor to several publications. He was a guest editor for volume five of the contemporary architecture journal Log and served as a member of the editorial board of ANY magazine, which explored the cultural role of architecture and its relationships to other disciplines. He is also a member of the Research Board of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.