The illustrious teaching career of Deborah Berke, FAIA—currently dean at the Yale School of Architecture and Deborah Berke Partners—is informed by more than 40 years of professional practice and experience as an educator. First a built environment instructor for Brooklyn elementary school students, Berke also created a program for high schoolers at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, putting into action a core belief: Architecture and urban education should be broadly accessible public benefits so that people have a sense of engagement in and ownership of where they live
This Q+A has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the most memorable moment of your teaching career?
Teaching has been a continuously rewarding part of my career. I get the same fulfillment today teaching an advanced studio at Yale as I did working with high school students at the IUAS 40 years ago. Students renew one’s faith in architecture. I love helping students uncover, discover, and develop their own talents.
What is your teaching style?
I try to help students find their own voices as designers. I’m not looking for a band of acolytes.
What, if anything, has changed about your style over the years?
I’m a much less nervous teacher, for one! More importantly though, I can point students to a much deeper breadth of examples, from within architecture and beyond, as well as precedents. Certainly, my view is more global and less based on the Eurocentric examples from my own education than it was when I first started teaching.
What has your scholarship revealed about the issues of diversity and equity in architecture?
The lack of diversity in architecture is well-known and well-documented. I have done everything I can to reach out to people, both groups and individuals, that architecture schools haven’t typically engaged, through initiatives like forming partnerships with HBCUs (and other majority-minority institutions)as well as increasing the amount of financial aid that is available. The work is ongoing and, while I am proud to say we have made meaningful progress on this front at Yale, there remains a lot of work to be done—in schools and in the profession. That progress must be sustained and advanced.
What is the most unfortunate reality about architectural education today?
Cost. It alone is discouraging to anyone with the talent and interest in becoming an architect—that your salary at your first job out of school will not be enough to allow you to pay off your loans. The cost of architectural education is a huge barrier to addressing the diversity and equity issues in the field.
What is the most promising aspect?
The breadth of the interests of students and their commitment to addressing sustainability, particularly the climate crisis.
What has been the greatest challenge you faced during your career?
There are not enough hours in the day! Thankfully, my firm, Deborah Berke Partners, is a great and truly supportive partnership. We work in a kind of shorthand, so we’re able to design collaboratively and without ego. So, some really exciting work gets done.
What jobs did your parents have?
My mother was a fashion design and a professor at FIT. My father ran a professional association. They were both great role models to me in terms of balancing creativity with professionalism and with having broad interests in many different disciplines.
What would you have been if not an architecture professor?
I have always been an architect and a teacher. I can’t imagine doing anything else.
What do you hope your legacy will be?
I hope I will be remembered for having a generous and inclusive approach to understanding and engaging with the built environment.
What does winning the Topaz Medallion mean to you?
It’s profoundly meaningful to me as an acknowledgment of over 40 years of work teaching architecture and sharing my passion for design as a discipline in context with other fields. I have always tried to teach architecture in a way that engages art, science, social sciences, and, most importantly, people.
This article appeared in the May/June 2022 issue of ARCHITECT.
