Professor Lisa Iwamoto appointed new Chair of Berkeley Architecture

Lisa Iwamoto, Professor of Architecture, has been appointed as the new Chair of the Department of Architecture in the College of Environmental Design, effective December 1, 2021. Iwamoto’s practice, teaching and research specializes in the intersection of material and constructive techniques with the geometric and spatial constraints of building. She has served as full-time faculty in the College’s department of architecture where she teaches design studios and seminars – her home for nearly the past two decades.

“I am pleased to appoint Lisa Iwamoto as the next chair of the department. She has dedicated her career to balancing practice with academia and enters the position with a well-rounded approach to architectural education that can meet the contemporary environmental challenges and opportunities we face” says Renee Y. Chow, Dean of the College of Environmental Design. As chair, Iwamoto plans to foreground and strengthen the profile of architectural design as the synthesis of the social, cultural, and technological research for which the department is historically known.

Iwamoto is a founding partner of IwamotoScott Architecture – a renowned San Francisco-based practice she leads with partner Craig Scott. IwamotoScott has received numerous awards including the Cooper Hewitt/Smithsonian National Design Award, the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices and League Prize, Interior Design Hall of Fame, Architectural Record Design Vanguard, a Progressive Architecture award and over twenty AIA Design Awards. Iwamoto has been recognized by Architectural Record as Next Generation Leader the 2018 Women in Architecture award, and her firm received the ACADIA Digital Practice Award of Excellence in 2017.

Her book Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques published by Princeton Architectural Press remains a popular primer in architectural education. IwamotoScott’s commissions include award-winning projects for Pinterest, DACRA and Bloomberg. Their new campus building for Ivy Tech Community College in Columbus, Indiana, the most recently awarded commission by the Cummins Design Excellence Program, is due to complete construction in Fall 2022. In 2013, in recognition of her innovative design work, she was honored with the inaugural Doris and Clarence Malo Collegium Teaching Chair in Design at UC Berkeley. She held the chair until 2018.