Deans List: Berkeley's Vishaan Chakrabarti on Rejecting the False Choices Embodied by Recent Architectural Pedagogies

2019-10-09T13:02:00-04:00

The Deans List is an interview series with the leaders of architecture schools, worldwide. The series profiles the school’s programs, pedagogical approaches, and academic goals, as defined by the dean–giving an invaluable perspective into the institution’s unique curriculum, faculty, and academic environment.

For this installment, Archinect spoke with Vishaan Chakrabarti, the founder of New York City's Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) who was recently selected as the incoming dean for the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. The school boasts a long history of nurturing multi-disciplinary approaches to improving the built environment while offering a slate of degree programs that include focuses on architecture, real estate development, urban design, and landscape architecture. As Chakrabarti prepares to assume deanship over the school in 2020, he offers a preview of what his tenure might hold, speaks out against the "false choices" ...

Screen/Print #54: Galen Cranz on Why We Need to Rethink the Chair

2017-04-28T12:04:00-04:00

Besides buildings (obviously), chairs are probably architects favorite things to design. There’s Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair and Gerrit Reitveld’s Zig-Zag chair; Arne Jacobson’s Model 3107 and Frank Llloyd Wright’s Peacock chair. Today, the tradition continues, with architects from David Adjaye to Rem Koolhaas to Zaha Hadid all designing places to perch. Yet, for all their formal grace and beauty, these chairs rarely break the mold. Invariably, they are designed around an upright individual sitting at a right angle. And, according to Galen Cranz, a Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, such traditional chair designs just don’t cut it—and they're even harming our health.

Archinect - Features

Deans List: Berkeley's Vishaan Chakrabarti on Rejecting the False Choices Embodied by Recent Architectural Pedagogies

Screen/Print #54: Galen Cranz on Why We Need to Rethink the Chair