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| Dean Mark Wigley |
Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger announced that Mark Wigley, one of the foremost architectural theorists and critics of his generation, has been named the new dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
Wigley, interim dean of the architecture school since September 2003, succeeds Bernard Tschumi, who served as dean for 15 years and who remains on Columbia's faculty.
"I'm delighted that Mark Wigley has agreed to serve as permanent dean of the School of Architecture , Preservation and Planning -- a position he has filled with extraordinary energy and skill on an acting basis this year," Bollinger said. "Mark has an unqualified devotion to the School and the profession, as well as an intense interest in ideas coupled with a clear idealism, making him the best person to assume this leadership role."
Wigley has served as guest curator for widely attended exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art , New York ; The Drawing Center, New York; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal ; and Witte de With Museum, Rotterdam .
An accomplished scholar and design teacher, he has written extensively on the theory and practice of architecture, and is the author of "Constant's New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire" (1998); "White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture" (1995); and "The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida's Haunt" (1993). He co-edited "The Activist Drawing: Situationist Architectures From Constant's New Babylon to Beyond" (2001). In 1990, he received the International Committee of Architectural Critics (C.I.C.A.) Triennial Award for Architectural Criticism.
"It has been very stimulating to guide this remarkable School over the last year," Wigley said. "I look forward to helping it take on the unique challenges and exciting potentials facing the global architect in the 21 st century city."
Prior to joining Columbia in 2000 as director of advanced studios, Wigley taught from 1987 to 1999 at Princeton University , where he became director of graduate studies in architecture in 1997. He received both his bachelor of architecture (1979) and his Ph.D. (1987) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. |
