Deborah Berke

Deborah Berke, FAIA, LEED AP is an architect, educator, and the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. She has been a Professor (adjunct) at Yale since 1987. In 2012, she was the inaugural recipient of the Berkeley-Rupp Prize at the University of California at Berkeley, which is given to an architect who has advanced the position of women in the profession and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and the community.

She is the founder of the New York-based architecture firm Deborah Berke Partners. Among firm’s most significant works are the Marianne Boesky Gallery building in New York, the Irwin Union Bank in Columbus, Indiana, the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut, the 21c Museum Hotels across the South and Midwest, the Cummins Distribution Headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana, and the Rockefeller Arts Center at SUNY Fredonia.

Deborah and the firm are the subject of two books: House Rules (Rizzoli, July 2016), which focuses on the firm’s residential work and offers practical and poetic advice for better living; and Working (Artifice, spring 2018), a survey of the firm’s workspaces, including offices, galleries, factories, and learning environments.

She is a board member of the James Howell Foundation, a member of the board of directors of Yaddo, and advisor to the Norman Foster Foundation. She was a founder and vice president of DesignNYC, a founding trustee of the Design Trust for Public Space, a trustee of the National Building Museum, chair of the board of advisors of the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, trustee of the Brearley School, and vice president of the AIA New York Chapter.

Deborah is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and The City University of New York. In 2005, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2017, her firm received the National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.