School Notes: School of Architecture
November/December 2012

Celebrating women in architecture

YSoA will host the first-ever gathering of its alumnae at a reunion conference November 30–December 1 to celebrate the accomplishments of women architects and mark the 30th anniversary of the Sonia Albert Schimberg Award. Sonia Albert ’50MArch was one of only two women to graduate from YSoA in 1950, when the field was still largely dominated by men. Her daughters created the award in her memory to honor an outstanding woman student each year at Commencement. The reunion will explore the legacy of YSoA women graduates, current conditions in architecture, and future trends. Students, faculty, and experts from related disciplines will join alumnae for panel discussions, lectures, and presentations.

Professor wins inaugural prize

Deborah Berke, adjunct professor of design, has been named the first recipient of a $100,000 prize that honors the advancement of women in architecture and recognizes a practitioner or academic who also emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and the community. The 2012 Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize, awarded by the University of California, Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, includes a semester-long professorship, a public lecture, and a gallery exhibition at the school. A founder of the New York City–based architecture firm Deborah Berke Partners, Berke has received awards for the 21c Museum Hotel Louisville and the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York.

Exhibition and symposium to focus on influential designer

Coinciding with the exhibition George Nelson: Architect/Writer/Designer/Teacher (November 5 through February 9), the school is hosting a two-day symposium titled George Nelson: Design for Living, American Mid-Century Design and its Legacy Today. The program, November 9–10, will bring together an international group of historians, critics, and designers to examine the extraordinary impact of Yale alumnus George Nelson (1908–1986). Nelson and his contemporaries helped evolve the Bauhaus aesthetic into a more colorful, playful, and versatile idiom that reflected the American lifestyle in the mid-twentieth century. After receiving BA and BArch degrees from Yale and the Rome Prize of the American Academy, Nelson worked as an architect, writer, publicist, lecturer, and curator before becoming director of design for Herman Miller, where, for nearly three decades, he shaped the company’s product line and public image.