Karen Van Lengen will complete a decade of leadership as Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia in July, 2009. During her tenure, Van Lengen has significantly raised the School’s profile, founded innovative academic programs and publications, built a substantial research culture among her faculty and directed a successful capital campaign as well as remaking the school’s home at Campbell Hall.

“It has been a privilege to lead the School of Architecture to a position of prominence and to have shaped its physical setting to reflect its overall mission,” Van Lengen said. “I look forward to the next period in my professional life with enthusiasm and a profound sense of achievement.”

Van Lengen is an award-wining architect who began her career as a Design Associate for I. M. Pei & Partners, New York City. After completing a Fulbright Fellowship in Rome, she established her own practice and gained international recognition with several award winning competitions and projects. From 1995-99 she chaired the Department of Architecture at Parsons School of Design in New York, where she founded the renowned Design Build Workshop before being appointed Dean of the University of Virginia School of Architecture in 1999.

As an academic leader, Van Lengen championed cross-disciplinary opportunities both within her school and across the University to address the complex environmental and cultural challenges that she dubbed The Architecture of Urgent Matters. She championed the school’s influence in the post-Katrina reconstruction initiatives, supported the development of emergency and sustainable housing programs and encouraged a constructive dialogue between ethics and aesthetics. In support of this overall agenda, Van Lengen created the new Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and oversaw the establishment of the new doctoral program in the Art History and the Architectural History Departments. Van Lengen also developed a strong relationship between the School and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, which has deeply influenced the growth of innovative technology in the School’s curriculum.

Perhaps Van Lengen’s most visible contribution to the School and the University has been her vision to transform Campbell Hall and its surrounding landscape by tapping the talents of her own faculty, students and alumni. “I speak for the architects of all these projects when expressing my profound gratitude and honor in working with Dean Van Lengen to help realize her vision and amazing accomplishment,” said W.G. Clark, Edmund Schureman Campbell Professor of Architecture and the architect of the Victor and Sono Elmaleh Wing at Campbell Hall.

Under Van Lengen’s leadership, the School of Architecture has significantly increased its endowment and as of November 2008, has raised more than 70-percent of the $25 million campaign goal, placing the School of Architecture’s performance above the University average. In 2004, Van Lengen worked with her Advisory Board to establish the School of Architecture Foundation Board, and together these organizations have built successful outreach and development programs. Stuart Siegel, Chair of the Architecture School Foundation Board, said, “Karen’s leadership, strong vision and active participation in all Board activities have directly insured that the historically unmatched professional, financial and alumni support for the School will remain as one of her greatest legacies for years to come.”

At the University level, Van Lengen worked with a small faculty group and the former Vice President for Research to found a pan-university initiative to promote integrated programs and projects that focus on environmental issues. Ariel Gomez, the former Vice President for Research said, “She belongs with a very selective group of leaders that are the very fabric and symbol of what is good at the University. She is without a doubt one the most creative thinkers and effective leaders that I have had the honor to work with.” Gene Block, Chancellor at UCLA and the former Provost at the University added, “I am deeply indebted to Dean Van Lengen for her outstanding leadership during my tenure as provost. Karen believed deeply in the need for cross-campus interdisciplinary scholarship and gave generously of her time to university-wide initiatives while moving the School of Architecture to new levels of prominence.”

In 2005, Van Lengen founded “Women’s Work,” a University program that sponsors monthly meetings focused on the research work of women faculty. Jeanne Liedtka, former Director of the Darden School’s Batten Institute said, “[Van Lengen’s] leadership at the Architecture School has brought a whole new dimension and richness to the conversation at the University. Her intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for collaboration across the professional schools has inspired all of us.”

During her tenure as Dean, Van Lengen has developed her own research that explores the relation between sound and space. A recent project, (in collaboration with Joel Sanders and Ben Rubin) MIX HOUSE, (part of the OPEN HOUSE Exhibition sponsored by the Vitra Museum and Art Center College, of Design, Pasadena) has received world wide acclaim through its many international shows. Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, has written, "Karen Van Lengen and Joel Sanders have engaged in a research project that is at once timely and startling original…. As a design project, MIX HOUSE recalls earlier work of both architects with domestic space as visual mediation, but extends it now not only to a different sense but also to a whole new register of cultural interrogations. MIX HOUSE stands alone as a design proposition, but it also provides, in the tradition of many manifesto designs, the starting point for a discussion of great resonance. It is in this sense both a scholarly and a critically engaged design intervention with the potential to be remembered as a seminal statement of a new configuration of cultural issues in a still emerging digital culture with enormous implications for the social and political realms of daily life.” Van Lengen has co-authored several articles related to this theme and is considered one of the pioneers in this emerging area of architecture. She and Joel Sanders plan to utilize these ideas in the upcoming renovation of the Lounge space in Campbell Hall to be completed this year.

As Van Lengen looks forward to new opportunities she celebrates her final year with the many constituencies she has influenced. Fitz-Gibbons Professor of Architecture, Robin Dripps, said, “She brought to the School and the larger University a commanding vision of architecture that engages the large and immediate problems facing the world. Always an advocate for the faculty and the School, Dean Van Lengen’s tenure is marked by her work to provide the resources and inspiration for each one of us to do the best possible work.”