Rice University School of Architecture announces Igor Marjanović as the new William Ward Watkin Dean. Beginning his position starting July 1, Marjanović is an experienced architect, educator, and curator. Before his move to Rice, Marjanović is currently the JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen Professor and chair of undergraduate architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

After receiving his architecture education from the University of Belgrade and the Moscow Architectural Institute, Marjanović received a Master's degree in Architecture from the Unversity of Illinois at Chicago and a Ph.D. at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. Prior to starting his practice, ReadyMade Studio, alongside Katerina Rüedi Ray, Marjanović has worked with Osnova Projekt in Belgrade, Denise Pontes Arquitetura Interiores in Fortaleza, Brazil, and OWP/P Architects (now CannonDesign) in Chicago. 

Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of Graduate Studies Dawn Finley shares, "He brings an outstanding record of academic leadership and research scholarship that complements the school's unique balance of pedagogy, practice, and theory." His work focuses on the integration of studio and theory while merging "historical scholarship on architectural pedagogy, practice and identity formation, examining the role of drawings, exhibitions, and publications in the emergence of international architectural culture."

Beyond his work as a practicing architect and curator, Marjanović's is a researcher with several published works such as "Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg's Urban Vision" and "The Evolving Project: The Journal of Architectural Education and the Expansion of Scholarship," co-edited by Marc J. Neveu and Sara Stevens. He is also the 2009 recipient of the AIA's Education Honor Award for his Florence studio "Disegno: Encounters in Public Space." The studio focuses on "advances the medium of drawing as a powerful tool to engage the contemporary refugee crisis, global migration, and decolonization."  

Commenting on his newly appointed position at Rice, Marjanović shared, "I am honored and humbled by this opportunity to join the Rice Architecture faculty, whom I've always admired for their distinctly generalist approach that integrates theory and practice and the making of buildings with the making of books. "As a designer and scholar myself, I am inspired by that kind of synthetic thinking, which is so needed in our moment of deep political, social and cultural fragmentation."

Marjanović will follow John Casbarian, Interim Dean and the Harry K. and Albert K. Smith Professor of Architecture who took the role in June 2019 following the appointment of former dean Sarah Whiting who went on to lead at Harvard GSD.