Monica Ponce de Leon

by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Monica Ponce de Leon is a Venezuela-born architect and founding principal with Nader Tehrani of Office dA, Inc. in Boston. Throughout her career, she has exhibited a strong commitment to teaching and practicing architecture concurrently. On September 1, 2008, she assumed the position of dean of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. Ponce de Leon previously was a professor of architecture and the director of the Digital Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Education
I went to the University of Miami for my bachelor of architecture, and then I went to Harvard University for my graduate studies and got a master of architecture in urban design.

When did you begin teaching?
I started teaching right out of school. I started teaching school at the same time I was working in an office, so I’ve always pursued both full-time: teaching and practice.

Why did you become an architect?
I was interested in making space as both an art form and as a form of constructing culture. In other words, it seems to me that architects materialize culture by the spaces and the places and the buildings that they make.

What drew you to the position of dean at the Taubman College?
I thought of this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The University of Michigan is a public university that has a tremendous reputation and history, especially in architecture and urban planning. It’s very large and very heterogeneous. It has a great, diverse faculty and student body.

I am interested in examining the state of architecture in education and in reinventing the way that we educate architects, and I thought that the University of Michigan would be one of the few places in the U.S. where I could do that. In particular, I’m interested in educating architects by bringing together different disciplines. When architects talk about interdisciplinary work, they usually talk about architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and planning, but the opportunity here is to work with experts in engineering, the arts, and the environment so that you actually bring different disciplines that are integral to architecture and have the field be enriched by working directly with them.

The University of Michigan has a very strong School of Natural Resources, where they’re looking at human impact on the environment from a scientific point of view. I think that as architects, when we talk about sustainability we leave out science as opposed to having the science be really integrated. This applies not only to the scale of buildings, but the scale of the materials that compose our buildings and also how our buildings are placed on the landscape and impact sites.

What do you think is the number one issue in architecture education?
The number one issue, I think, is that architecture education has been the same since the 19th century. We still operate with the Beaux Arts model of an instructor leading a studio and the students following and not understanding the relationship between architecture and the world; in other words, not understanding the relationship between architecture and other fields. I think we need to take a very hard look at the way that we educate architects and whether this Beaux Arts model has run its course, and we have to come up with a different methodology that would prepare architects to be more viable in society in the future.

What teaching methodology do you envision?
I think that instead of having students be exposed only to architects, we need to have an interdisciplinary curriculum where experts in many different fields come together to teach architects. Only in that way can we actually transform the profession and reenergize it.

You would like to see more emphasis on collaboration and less on design?
No, design as the result of different kinds of expertise as opposed to design as the result of the whim of the master architect. I’ll give you an example. When we teach environmental technology, conventionally you get an architect who has knowledge on systems, and that architect teaches architecture students.

Instead, here at Michigan I would like to bring together faculty from the School of Natural Resources (who understand land use and the impact of buildings in the environment) with mechanical engineers (who understand the impact of mechanical systems on the environment but also in human comfort), with designers and architects. My intention is to have courses that are not exclusively taught by architects, but by a balance of designers and experts in other fields.

What do your students say is important to their education?
I think sustainability is certainly a big topic of interest for the new generation, but in my conversations with the students what has really come to the forefront is that they understand that the profession of architecture is really flexible and is going to change in the near future. They want more diversity in what they know, so that they can operate at many levels with many kinds of services and clients. They want flexibility for their future. They think that the definition of what an architect does is more expansive than what we acknowledge in architecture schools.

It was interesting, because my first day here on campus, I had a meeting with students and I asked them why they are studying architecture. Many of them gave me a similar answer, which is that they thought of design as something that was pervasive, as something that touched almost everything and they thought of the architect as one of the most broad-minded designers; one who could touch all scales from an object to urban planning. This is not a new way of thinking of architecture. This is a very 20th-century way of thinking of architecture, but I think that as the 20th century evolved, we began really to narrow the definition of what an architect does, as opposed to expanding it.

For me, the idea of bringing different kinds of expertise into architecture education is precisely so that we can broaden the definition of what an architect can engage with. The recent economic developments, I think, have contributed quite a bit to this desire of the students to have a broader education. They see themselves as perhaps not being able to get a job in architects’ offices, but having to pursue other kinds of design or planning careers. If they have a broader base, I think that will open up more doors for them.

What are you currently reading?
I am in the middle of reviewing a book for Princeton Architectural Press, so I’ve been reading that book. It’s called Expanded Practice, and it’s by two young architects named Höweler and Yoon.

What other priorities do you have while at the University of Michigan?
Another one of my priorities is to increase the diversity of those who choose architecture as a field of practice. The field of architecture has dismal numbers in minority recruitment, and women are still underrepresented in the field. This is something that I have experienced first-hand in practice. I think that architecture education plays a key role in transforming the future of the profession and making it more diverse.

The last time I checked the numbers, it was about 55 percent women and 45 percent men enrolled in architecture schools, which is not unusual. It’s a trend worldwide. In other words, there are slightly more females in schools, but when you look at the numbers of practicing men versus practicing women, the number of men is still overwhelming. As a female architect, when I’m going to meetings, the majority of people in the room are men. Our numbers regarding African Americans and Hispanics are below 5 percent for each of those groups in the profession and in architecture schools. At Michigan, because there’s such a tradition of diversity, we actually have better numbers than nationally, but they’re still very low. The University of Michigan has a long history of being active in pursuing diversity as a core topic. In that sense, we’re in a little bit better position but it’s still difficult to attract minorities.

How do you hope to do that?
It’s interesting, because I see the problem as divided. The problem of how to bring minorities into the profession has to do with what happens before they apply, before they decide what professions to pursue. At Harvard University, it was not that we were admitting minorities at a lesser rate than non-minorities. No, that’s not the issue. The problem was that we really didn’t have many minorities apply, period. I think that higher education is going to have to work with high school and junior high levels as a means of actually making architecture something that is a viable option for African Americans and Hispanics. If they’re not exposed to it at a young age, they will not think of it as an option, and they’ll go into other kinds of professions that are more conventional for those minority groups. I can say that because of course I’m Hispanic myself.

In terms of women in the profession, I think a lot of research has to take place as to why there’s such a gap between the number of female students in academia today who are graduating and the number of female architects practicing. I don’t have the answer to why there’s a gap, but I do think as an institution we need to put funds into researching why the gap is taking place.

The conventional wisdom has been that the time demands of practice are difficult for women with families. Do you agree with that, or do you think that there are other factors at work?
If you had asked me this very same question a year ago, I would have said yes, this is probably the reason. But that would’ve been a misinformed answer. I think we need actual research, because when you look at law school, for example, which has similar demands and long hours and expectations, we don’t see such a steep drop out from graduation into practice. I cannot say wholeheartedly the conventional wisdom is correct. This is why I think the only way to tackle the problem is by actually putting money behind research and finding the real causes.