Pratt Institute Provost Donna Heiland has announced the departure of Harriet Harriss as the School of Architecture's dean in an email sent to the Pratt community. Harriss was the second female dean to lead the school after Frances Halsband, who served from 1991–94.
While a response from Harriss hasn't been provided to the public, Provost Heiland commented: "I write to share the news that, after three years leading the School of Architecture, Dean Harriet Harriss will — prior to the fall semester — transition into a leave to pursue research and will subsequently join the faculty," adding, "This transition will allow her [Harriss] to focus on advancing her expertise in the intersection of climate justice pedagogy, practice, and policy in service to the School's strategic agenda and strength in this area."
At the beginning of her tenure as dean in 2019, I had the chance to chat with Harriss for Archinect's Deans List series. We discussed her pedagogical stance on architectural education, what excited her most as Pratt's new dean, the future of architecture academia, and the biggest challenges facing students. "Architecture's value is embodied in its processes, not just its outputs, and tomorrow's most successful architectural designers will be those whose education has enabled their intellectual agility, connectivity to the community, and a predisposition towards innovation and invention," she shared.
Her extensive background as an architect, academic, and researcher, focusing on climate justice, practice, and policy, echoes throughout her legacy at the school. While at Pratt, significant contributions included the founding of the school's first DEI Council, increasing student prizes and scholarships, and establishing a graduate incubator. She also assisted in creating new opportunities to strengthen the collaboration between students, faculty, and academic leadership, as well as helping launch a new master's degree program in landscape architecture. While these are but a few of Harriss' contributions, her work has reinforced the institution's standing as one of the top-ranked architecture schools in the U.S., as well as being the only American school of architecture with national and international accreditations recognized by NAAB and RIBA.
Provost Heiland continued to write: "I am glad to have had the opportunity to partner with Dean Harriss and appreciate that she has been working closely with me to ensure a smooth transition for the school community. I am grateful to Assistant Dean Quilian Riano for agreeing to serve as Interim Dean, and look forward to working with him as well."
Pratt Institute confirmed that the search for Harriss' successor is in the works.
The last two years have been a trying time for academic leaders, and school leadership changes have been recurring news. Earlier this year, Nader Tehrani announced his resignation as Cooper Union's dean, Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter confirmed her leave as Woodbury dean in October 2021, Vishaan Chakrabarti stepped down as dean of Berkeley CED in September 2021, and Amale Andros gave up her position as dean of Columbia GSAPP in May 2021. Architectural academia is changing. However, the number of resignations and leaves from prominent leaders asks the community to ponder the state of architectural education and its leadership.
In concluding our 2019 interview, I asked Harriss what the best advice she had been given during her career in architecture and academia was. "Architecture creates spatial legacies for living in," she responded. "Whether these legacies are good or bad depends on whether the architect prioritizes people or products during the process of creating them. The needs of the end user will always outlive technologies, trends, and tastes. By addressing these needs, architects ensure that their legacies are relevant, lasting, and even loved, rather than become redundant liabilities."
7 Comments
Respect her choosing to teach and research. And, (yay!,) +Q, the interim dean! Those who know, know what I mean...
looks like the movement to prioritize women in architecture is over
Her very first interaction with Pratt was a welcoming speech where she proclaimed there are “too many rich white men” like myself in the real estate sector. The subtext was that meritocracy didn’t create the equal outcomes desired due to a conspiracy of white male privilege — and nothing else. This was in the middle of an ongoing campaign to dismantle the “inherently racist and neo-colonial” canon of architecture in the United States.
Just a few weeks ago, Vladimir Putin said in a speech that the United States is “inherently racist and neo-colonial” due to the Breton woods hegemony created after World War 2. The subtext was that we intentionally created a “one sided” economy of unequal outcomes due to a conspiracy against the global south — and nothing else. This was in the middle of the ongoing “de-nazification” special operation in Ukraine.
As the democrats head into midterms, all the polls are telling us that this “woke” conspiracy theory is preventing climate action in the building sector, which contributes more than 40% of global carbon emissions. The only way Senator Manchin could get on board was by rebranding the Build Back Better agenda behind closed doors, where they removed the inflationary equity items. Now that President Biden has activated the Defense Production act, we are doing more than deploying cannons to Ukraine to defend against this ongoing projection campaign, but deploying a new canon of green buildings to Europe to defend against the politicization of architecture.
Gender parity or gender parody? As they say in The Kingdom — cheerio!
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-putin-moscow-west-economics-world-order-1726686
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/russian-national-charged-conspiring-have-us-citizens-act-illegal-agents-russian-government?fbclid=IwAR1JkkT21sc60WAzdv730Udq0kInEm5r9xhJPhAXLRbAJtxjOjTxgLy6kgo
https://time.com/6204172/survey-voters-democrats-economy/
sire, this is a wendy's
Exactly. This is an architecture school.
Exactly. This is an architecture school.
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