A source from Columbia University announced Monday that Mark Wigley, the Dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), will step down from his position at the end of the academic year in 2014. Today many remember the last pair of shoes left by Bernard Tschumi certainly was and will be very difficult to fill by their successors.The announcement was made in an email (excerpted below) from Columbia's president, Lee C. Bollinger

"After nearly a decade of innovative leadership, Dean of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Mark Wigley has shared the news that this will be his final academic year as the School's dean.

Let me just say now that Mark has been an extraordinary dean, a University citizen of the first order, and a friend I, and I know we, cherish. In every context, he has represented the School and the institution in ways that make us all proud to be part of such a vibrant place. And to all of it he has brought his unique humor and made us laugh."

Text via Archinect.

 
Dean-Architecture, Sch Arch Plann/Pres; Professor. Photo, 2004.

Since taking office, Wigley has propelled students and faculty to extend their education abroad, launching eleven international studios in five continents, an initiative dubbed as “Studio-X Global.” Furthermore, he has sponsored the creation of more than a dozen unique research labs focusing on a range of subjects from the “future of cities” to cultural and technological advancement.

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Mark Antony Wigley is a New Zealand-born architect, author, and (since 2004 until 2014) Dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, New York, USA.

In 2005, Wigley founded Volume Magazine together with Rem Koolhaas and Ole Bouman. A collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO Rotterdam and C-lab (Columbia University NY), Volume Magazine is an experimental think tank focusing on the process of spatial and cultural reflexivity. The magazine aims to explore "beyond architecture’s definition of 'making buildings'" by presenting global views on architecture and design, broader attitudes to social structures and created environments; and embodies progressive journalism.

Created and founded in collaboration with Brett Steele the Institute of Failure; essentially an academic institution for the instruction and theory of failure (as opposed to success).

An accomplished scholar and design teacher, Mark Wigley 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: Retracing Situationalist Architectures from Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond (2001). Wigley has served as 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. He received both his Bachelor of Architecture (1979) and his Ph.D. (1987) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

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Kenneth Frampton (1930) studied architecture at Guildford School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. Subsequently he worked in Israel, with Middlesex County Council and Douglas Stephen and Partners (1961–66), during which time he was also a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art (1961–64), tutor at the Architectural Association (1961–63) and Technical Editor of the journal Architectural Design (AD) (1962–65).

Frampton has also taught at Princeton University (1966–71) and the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, (1980). He has been a member of the faculty at Graduate School of Architecture and Planning of Columbia University since 1972, and that same year he became a fellow of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York -- (whose members also included Peter Eisenman, Manfredo Tafuri and Rem Koolhaas) -- and a co-founding editor of its magazine Oppositions.

Frampton is a permanent resident of the USA.

Frampton is well known for his writing on twentieth-century architecture. His books include Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980; revised 1985, 1992 and 2007) and Studies in Tectonic Culture (1995). Frampton achieved great prominence (and influence) in architectural education with his essay "Towards a Critical Regionalism" (1983) — though the term had already been coined by Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre. Also, Frampton's essay was included in a book The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster, though Frampton is critical of postmodernism. Frampton's own position attempts to defend a version of modernism that looks to either critical regionalism or a 'momentary' understanding of the autonomy of architectural practice in terms of its own concerns with form and tectonics which cannot be reduced to economics (whilst conversely retaining a Leftist viewpoint regarding the social responsibility of architecture).

In 2002 a collection of Frampton's writings over a period of 35 years was collated and published under the title Labour, Work and Architecture.

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Published on: September 25, 2013
Cite: "Mark Wigley will leave office at 2014" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/mark-wigley-will-leave-office-2014> ISSN 1139-6415
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