Deborah Berke
Deborah Berke, FAIA, LEED AP is an architect, educator, and the founder of Deborah Berke Partners. Based in New York City, Deborah Berke Partners is an award-winning architecture, planning, and design firm that is currently completing a new business headquarters for Cummins Inc. in Indianapolis, Indiana, the 122 Community Arts Center in New York City, and new residences on the East and West Coasts and in the Midwest. Deborah leads the firm alongside two partners, Maitland Jones and Marc Leff, senior principals Stephen Brockman and Caroline Wharton Ewing, and six principals.
Deborah is the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, the first woman to hold the position. 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.
Deborah and the firm are the subject of two upcoming 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, fall 2016), a survey of the firm’s workspaces, including offices, galleries, factories, and learning environments.
She is a board member of the James Howell Foundation, and a member of the board of directors of Yaddo. 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.