Archinect - News

Brett Steele appointed as new USC School of Architecture dean

2023-12-04T20:35:00-05:00

The University of Southern California (USC) today announced the appointment of renowned architect and educator Brett Steele as its new dean for the School of Architecture.

Steele will be stepping in to replace interim dean Willow Bay, who was appointed back in July 2022, following the quiet departure of former architecture dean Milton Curry.

Steele is no stranger to leading prominent schools of architecture. Prior to his new future position at USC, he served as UCLA's School of the Arts and Architecture dean since 2017. Before his time working in Los Angeles, he held pivotal leadership positions at the Architectural Association (AA), serving as a chief executive and Director since 2005. Prior to that, he created and led the AA Design Research Lab, the school's first accredited Master of Architecture program, for eight years.

According to USC President Carol Folt, "Brett Steele’s collaborative leadership is a perfect fit for our School of Architecture. One of the things that impress...

Milton S.F. Curry joins Cornell AAP as Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Engagement

2023-07-25T14:46:00-04:00

Former USC School of Architecture Dean (2017–22) Milton S.F. Curry will be joining Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP) as its new Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Engagement and Professor of Architecture.

Curry's new position began on July 1, 2023, according to Cornell AAP, and will bring him into contact with the university community and broader public through a range of new initiatives that include the launch of the school’s social justice-focused Black Cities Americas Lab.

Previously on Archinect: Deans List: Milton Curry shares his vision for the future of the USC School of Architecture

During his five-year tenure as Dean at USC, Curry had a list of accomplishments that includes the school’s acquisition of the once-lost Paul Revere Williams archive and shifted educational emphasis towards including academic theories of architecture across the curriculum. He will come to the AAP will similar past experience as the University of M...

CriticalProductive: New journal on culture, arts, and architecture to be launched by former USC Dean Milton S. F. Curry

2023-01-25T11:56:00-05:00

Former USC School of Architecture Dean Milton S. F. Curry has announced the creation of a new architecture journal. Titled CriticalProductive, the peer-reviewed print and digital academic journal will be released three times per year by MIT Press and will be “invested in the intellectual project of culture, arts, and architecture.”

Curry is joined in the magazine’s production by program and editorial assistant Grace Cillo. Other names associated with the journal’s editorial include Cornell associate professor Lilly H. Chi, Mexican architect Frida Escobedo, and UCLA city-LAB director Dana Cuff.

“It is a place where cultural theorists, designers, architects, urbanists, artists, humanists, and activists reflect on contemporary culture and experiment with provocative ideas on how to disrupt normative paradigms, activate and catalyze new potentials, and utilize...

New $3.1 million Conserving Black Modernism grant program announced by the Getty Foundation and National Trust for Historic Preservation

2022-09-19T14:37:00-04:00

The Getty Foundation together with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has announced the commitment of $3.1 million in the form of institutional grants to individuals and organizations that are working to preserve the legacy of historic modern architecture designed by Black architects nationwide.

Under the title Conserving Black Modernism, the two-year grant program, part of a larger $80 million effort overseen by the Action Fund, will support the documentation of 16 overlooked sites across the country while providing useful preservation training and storytelling resources to their future stewards.

The Getty says they are remiss at not including any works by one of America’s many underappreciated Black designers in its otherwise successful Keeping It Modern initiative and will look to address this absence with a new program that helps enshrine their contributions to what became the most defining architectural movement of the ...

USC Architecture launches program to find built solutions for future pandemics

2020-06-15T18:56:00-04:00

The University of Southern California School of Architecture has announced the launch of the HLW Project Héroe Research Initiative, an "interdisciplinary task force comprised of architects, consultants, medical experts, contractors, and USC Architecture students and recent graduates that aims to find a built solution to prevent future COVID-19-like outbreaks."

The effort is led by USC Architecture alumnus David Swartz and is being developed in collaboration with architects HLW and the USC Keck School of Medicine. According to a press release published by the school, Project Héroe will study how "COVID-19 can help identify infrastructures that will thwart future pandemics and allow people to interact unhindered by social distancing."

Previously on Archinect: "#OperationPPE puts architects to work 3d-printing protective equipment for frontline medical workers." Photo courtesy of USC Architecture Operation PPE.

Describing the project, Swartz writes, “My goal with this project is the h...

USC Dean Milton S.F. Curry: "Collectively, we too are the guardians of the democratic space and civic imaginations"

2020-06-03T12:40:00-04:00

University of Southern California School of Architecture Dean Milton S.F. Curry issued a statement today commenting on the ongoing racial justice-focused protests taking place nationwide.

Curry's message comes as various architecture organizations and firms, including the American Institute of Architects and the National Organization of Minority Architects, issue statements in support of the protests.

Dean Curry's letter is published in full here:

We at the USC School of Architecture mourn the tragic, unnecessary, and avoidable loss of another life, that of George Floyd, in the hands of law enforcement in Minneapolis last week. We also affirm the power and meaning of thoughtful protest and civil disobedience in service of structural change for the betterment of all of our fellow Americans. We also reflect on the many lives of Black Americans that have been taken by the ravages of slavery and colonialism, abject violence in the form of beatings and lynchings, racial capitalism and ...

Spatializing Blackness: Milton Curry on black aesthetics and urbanism

2017-12-11T15:05:00-05:00

Architecture, like contemporary art in the 1990s and legal theory a decade before, faces a critical moment in theory and practice. What do black citizens of major U.S. cities and global cities have to look forward to in the coming century in terms of urban conditions and their agency in determining how these conditions change and transform? What does an approach to cities that takes into account black agency, social codes and aesthetics have to offer to city-making as such?

CNN Style highlights USC architecture dean and CriticalProductive editor, Milton S. F. Curry, and his recent role as lead organizer behind Spatializing Blackness, a three-part panel discussion on "contemporary thinking and creative work related to black aesthetics, urbanism and the lived experiences of black bodies" at Design Miami 2017.

Listen to the Rethinking the City Through Blackness/ discussion from December 6, featuring David Adjaye, Amanda Williams, and Germane Barnes, below (click here for the full list of the 2017 Design Talks program).

Archinect also recently interviewed Curry — one month into his new deanship — as part of our ongoing Deans List series.

New USC Dean Milton Curry shifts pedagogical focus toward theory

2017-04-27T15:30:00-04:00

When you think about diversity and globalization and urbanization, you can’t do it without a theoretical underpinning. You just can’t. And I think that what we’re seeing in the discipline at large is the limit conditions of thinking a-theoretically about urbanism, about inequality, about what we should do about environmental challenges and sustainability. We’ve got to address it through a theoretical lens. - Milton Curry

In this interview conducted by Christopher Hawthorne as part of his pithy Building Type column, the soon-to-be-Dean of USC's School of Architecture Milton Curry talks about reintroducing a theoretical emphasis to the school's programs. Curry, who in his time at University of Michigan experienced Detroit's imploding urbanity first-hand, also wants to build greater connections between underserved students in Los Angeles and the university. "Los Angeles metro region is huge in its economic footprint, its land footprint," Curry explains. "I believe cities to some degree have more influence than merely being one of a combination of cities within one nation. They execute trade deals on their own, in some cases. They execute climate policies, other kinds of policing policies on their own. I think that some of those lessons will apply to Los Angeles."

Milton Curry named USC's new Dean of the School of Architecture

2017-04-11T12:28:00-04:00

After serving two influential five-year terms, USC's Qingyun Ma will remain on the faculty but step down as the Dean of The School of Architecture on July 1st, when he will be replaced by Milton Curry. According to the L.A. Times:

Curry arrives from the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he is associate dean for academic affairs and strategic initiatives. He was chosen for the post at USC based upon his expertise “at the forefront of disciplinary areas on race, architecture and urbanism that engages cultural theory and humanities research,” the announcement said.

Curry founded the CriticalProductive Journal, which examined scholarship and creative pursuits in architecture, urbanism and cultural theory. He also co-founded Appendix Journal in the early 1990s, which helped to catalyze debate on architecture and race, among other subjects.