Architecture School appoints new dean

Monica Ponce de Leon will be the next dean of the School of Architecture, the University announced Wednesday afternoon.

Ponce de Leon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Her predecessor, professor Alejandro Zaera-Polo, resigned in October 2014after two years as dean.

Ponce de Leon will begin her position on Jan. 1, 2016.

She has served since 2008 as dean of theTaubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where she is also aprofessor. Previously, she was a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Ponce de Leon has also held teaching appointments at Northeastern University, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the Rhode Island School of Design and Georgia Institute of Technology.

She co-founded a Boston-based architecture and design firm called Office dA in 1991. Since 2011, she has been running her own design practice, MPdL Studio.

As a pioneer in applying robotic technology to manufacturing and fabrication processes, Ponce de Leon helped create a digital fabrication lab with state-of-the-art technology at the University of Michigan. Her work inspired other architecture schools nationwide to incorporate digital tools and utilize digital fabrication in their research and curriculum.

Ponce de Leon received the National Design Award in Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt and the Smithsonian National Design. She has also been the recipient of the Young Architects Award, the Emerging Voices Award and theAcademy Award in Architecture from theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters.

Ponce de Leon holds a master’s degree in architecture and urban design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Miami.

Zaera-Polo’s appointment in 2012 was met with controversy at the time, with graduate students expressing their disapproval of the selection.

Upon his resignation in October, the University said in a statement that Zaera-Polo had resigned to devote more attention to his research and other professional activities. He remains a professor in the Architecture School.

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Zaera-Polo has since alleged on his personal website that the University overreacted to his lack of inclusion of academic citations in a publication accompanying the Exhibition Elements of Architecture at the Venice Biennale in 2014 and forced him to resign. The University then responded publicly that Zaera-Polo’s account was “inaccurate and incomplete.”

Since Zaera-Polo's resignation, Stanley Allen GS ’88 has served as the acting dean of the Architecture School as well as the leader of the search committee for the new dean.

Zaera-Polo and Allen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Members of the search committee included architecture professors Christine Boyer and Guy J.P. Nordenson, as well as two graduate student representatives.

Members contacted did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Architecture professor Elizabeth Diller, who supervised the search committee that appointed Zaera-Polo, did not respond to a request for comment. Departmental representative Mario Gandelsonas also did not respond to a request for comment.