Architect, curator, and artist, Andrés Jaque, who is the founding principal of the Office for Political Innovation (OFFPOLINN), has been appointed as the next Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

Jaque's role will be effective on September 1, 2022. 

Announced by the school's president Lee C. Bollinger said "It is with great pleasure that I write to announce my appointment of Andrés Jaque to serve as the next Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP)."

Andrés Jaque will take over the role from Weiping Wu, who has served as an interim dean since the beginning of this year.

Currently, Andrés leads the School’s Master of Science program in Advanced Architectural Design. He is also a distinguished architect, curator, and artist. He curated the 2020 Shanghai Biennale under the theme of Bodies of Water. 

Office for Political Innovation's recent proposal for an experimental school in Madrid. Image courtesy of Andres Jacque / Office for Political Innovation

"I look forward to further intensifying GSAPP’s role in pushing the disciplinary boundaries"

"The world is radically evolving, and GSAPP is known for leading change and for mobilizing our disciplines to reinvent societies, environments, politics, and technologies in order to address the challenges of our times,” said Andrés Jaque. 

"Building on the School’s strong legacy established by my predecessors and the faculty at large, I look forward to further intensifying GSAPP’s role in pushing the disciplinary boundaries of our fields to challenge structural forms of domain, and to redefine the demands of the future," Jaque added.

According to GSAPP's press statement, "Andrés Jaque has championed ways to bring inclusivity to the built environment." 

"This appointment confirms Columbia GSAPP’s commitment to steward the evolution of bodies, technologies, and ecosystems," reads the statement. 

Professor Andrés Jaque has taught at GSAPP since 2013 and directs the School’s Master of Science program in Advanced Architectural Design since 2018. 

In 2003, he founded the Office for Political Innovation, an international architectural firm based in New York and Madrid. He has received awards for projects in a broad diversity of media and scales.

Office for Political Innovation's Run Run Run, a colorful intervention where its interiors contain suspended gardens, colorful bar stools, straw-looking ceiling and play areas. Image © José Hevia

His practice is known for its "transectional" approach to architectural design in which he sees architecture "as the intervention on complex composites of relationships, where its agency is negotiated with the agency unfold by other entities."

Professor Jaque’s work is part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago and has been exhibited at institutions around the world. 

He received many prestigious accolades, including the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts from the City of Vienna, the Silver Lion for Best Research Project at the 14th Venice Biennale, and the Dionisio Hernández Gil Prize. 

He co-curated Manifesta 12 in Palermo in 2018 and was Chief Curator of the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Bodies of Water. Professor Jaque received his PhD and MArch from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid.

"I would like to express my thanks to the search committee for their rigorous and thoughtful work, and to Weiping Wu, who has led the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation on an interim basis since the beginning of this year with great care and skill," said Columbia GSAPP President Lee C. Bollinger.

Top image: Andrés Jaque. Image © Miguel de Guzman via Columbia GSAPP.

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