A restructuring at the top of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning (GSAPP) has been announced to coincide with the end of outgoing dean Amale Andraos' tenure. 

Weiping Wu will now serve as GSAPP’s interim dean, while Mario Gooden is the new interim M.Arch graduate program director, replacing Andraos. 

Wu was previously the director of the M.S. and Ph.D. in Urban Planning programs and brings to her new position more than twenty years of academic and professional experience. Prior to joining the GSAPP faculty in 2016, Wu served as Chair of the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. 

Her research has been focused on the urbanization of developing countries and China in particular. She has published several books and is the current president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), which represents a consortium of educational institutions that offer credentials in urban and regional planning.

Gooden is a 1990 GSAPP graduate and the founder of South Carolina-based practice Huff + Gooden Architects. He currently serves as the co-director of Columbia’s Global Africa Lab and is a full-time professor of Professional Practice and the sequence director for the Advanced Architecture Studios program. 

Gooden’s performance art has been featured at the MoMA and Princeton’s BIM Incubator. His architectural work has been exhibited in the Venice Biennale and National Building Museum, among other places. His 2016 book Dark Space: Architecture, Representation, Black Identity is considered one of the seminal titles in race and design studies in the past decade. Gooden graduated magna cum laude from Clemson University before moving to New York in 1987.

A search for Andraos' permanent replacement is still currently underway. University president Lee Bollinger expressed his “profound thanks” to each for their agreeing to serve in the interim roles.