2025 AIA Gold Medal Award Medal Winner Deborah Berke

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast where we find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. I'm your host Evelyn Lee, an architect who spans tech as an angel investor, startup advisor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're a seasoned architect or just starting in the field, this podcast is your gateway to think differently about the role architects play within our global community. Hello disruptors. Welcome to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted. Today I get to do something I truly enjoy. I get to sit back and listen as two remarkable architects have a thoughtful, candid and deeply human conversation. You will hear from Deborah Burke, FAIA Lead ap, the architect educator, founder of Tenberk, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture and the 2025 recipient of the AIA Gold Medal.

A You will also hear from Aarti Krishnamoorthy, AIA Lead ap, a principal at Tenburg whose work spans mission driven institutions, foundations and major academic projects for Princeton University and Smith College. Together they reflect on the arc of Deborah's career from discovering architecture at age 13 to shaping a practice grounded in collaboration, authenticity and optimism. They explore what it means to design for the greater good, how architecture must respond to the increasing complexity of today, and why optimism remains an essential creative act. Arti shares her own global perspective, informed by her upbringing in Singapore and her deep community involvement in cleans and how she and Deborah led with shared values and belief in the power of architecture to create meaningful and joyful spaces. Woven throughout the conversation is the story of ten Burke, a New York based studio guided by the conviction that the truest measure of design is the good it brings into the world. Their work is imaginative, sustainable and delightful, and it is grounded in a generous and collaborative approach to design practice. This is an intimate exchange about practice, legacy, teaching, listening and leading with purpose. I'm excited for you all to hear it.

B I am Deborah Burke and my name is Aarthi Krishnamoorthy. Deborah, you're a Fellow at the American Institute of Architects, a member of the Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a member of the National Academy of design. In 2013, you received the first Berkeley Rupp Award, given by the University of California at Berkeley to a distinguished practitioner or academic who has made a significant contribution to promoting the advancement of women in the field of architecture and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and the community. In 2016, you became the first woman dean of the Yale School of Architecture, where you have been a professor since 1987 and in 2022 you received the AIA's prestigious Topaz Award for your nimble harmonization of education and practice. Deborah, we are so proud of you. All of us at Tenbrook, we are so proud of you. This year in 2025, you were awarded the AIA Gold, the AIA's highest honor recognizing individuals whose work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. It's an award that is in recognition of your work and your achievements.

B So if I can pause now, there's so much that I've said about your work and your achievements. How does it feel to receive this award and what does it mean to you?

C Wow. Thank you for all those kind words. And that long list makes me sound like an indefatigable Energizer Bunny, I think, with architecture written across her sweatshirt. The AIA Gold is obviously a staggeringly enormous honor. And I would say it maybe meant more to me other than, you know, my child, my beautiful, perfect child and my happy life. It meant more to me than anything, I think, because when I was 13 years old, I decided I was going to be an architect. And here I am, decades and decades later, more than half a century later, being recognized by the national organization, the AIA, with their top awards. So certainly as a 13 year old, I couldn't have imagined this.

C And even in the early days of this practice, I couldn't have imagined this. So feels damn good is how it feels.

B And you're in such good company as well.

C Well, that is for sure true. And when I think about, I don't know, Carol Ross Barney, who I admire enormously, from Chicago, Marlon Blackwell from Arkansas, Brooks and Scarpa from California, and now me from New York, I think what's wonderful there among us all, and it's funny because we were seated in front of the American pavilion at the Biennale this summer, just sitting around shooting the breeze on a front porch, talking about having won the AIA Gold one, it was extraordinary company to be in, not only because of the quality of. Of everyone's work, but also because they are all decent, generous, fun to hang around with people, but because I think we speak not just stylistically, but geographically to on one hand, the enormous diversity of American architecture today, but on the other hand, what unites us as architects, and I think all the firms and all the gold medal winners that I just mentioned, all practice with an approach to architecture of we, not I and Arti. You can certainly say that about what it's like to be at Tenberg. We all do what I would call true to place kind of work wherever we may be located, from the west coast to the east coast and places in between. And we all understand architecture as both an internal collaborative undertaking. By that I mean that you nurture studio culture within your own firm and an external collaborative undertaking where you share generously and learn from engineers, landscape architecture, lighting designers, graphic designers, clients, city planning councils. All the folks you deal with are not the other nor the enemy, but actually part of a collaborative team.

C So it's a great company to be in.

B Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting what you say about the nature of how, how you view practice and how they view practice and indeed the truth of what running a practice is and doing architecture today. In winning the AIA gold. In your lecture that followed you, and I've heard you talk about this before, you kind of defray the image of the caped architect, the singular silhouetted man mostly, who is the sole author of Capital A Architecture and have always, for the last 20 years, you've always talked about architecture as a kind of collaborative act. And today as Tenberg, we refer to ourselves as a collective of creatives. And I think that's true. We talk about our ingenuity stemming from our ideological diversity, which is all to say that we not only appreciate, we see it as a strength that each of us have different lived experiences and we bring, bring all of that to the table as we design. So let me ask you about your lived experience.

B Let me ask you, maybe that 13 year old, and how did your interest in architecture begin?

C So I'm actually glad you asked that question because I hope my life story inspires other young people to become architects. So I grew up in Queens, part of New York City, but not the fancy part of New York City, that's for sure. I went to New York City public schools and my parents themselves had a wonderful and healthy and happy marriage. But they were two very different people. My father ran a small trade organization, but he was obsessed with history. And my mother was a fashion designer who taught at fit. And so this combination of appreciating history at home and appreciating design at home filled our dinner table conversations. But the neighborhood that we lived in was a neighborhood of single family houses.

C It was a nice neighborhood. There were big trees that lined the streets, but the houses were close together. On the pieces of property were small, but perhaps most interestingly, they were all different. It wasn't a Levittown street front of every house being the same, but rather when it had been built from roughly the 1890s, when, well through the 1960s, as the lots got filled up, the houses were all quite different. And as a young teenager, I had a good friend who was a couple of years older, and he knew he wanted to be an architect. And we would go for walks on summer nights up and down the streets. You know that you remember that freedom of being a kid in the summertime, right? And we would look, this does not sound like I was particularly hip, and I was not just to walk up and down the streets with your one friend.

B You had friends at least.

C Come on, friends. Yes, I did have friends. But to walk up and down the street with one of these friends and look at the houses and figure and see what lights were on and look at the facade. And then we would madly together try to figure out how they were laid out on the inside, based on what they looked like on the outside. And it's like, well, that's what any normal person does on their summer night when they're 13 years old. So we would do that all summer long for a couple of summers in a row. And after one of these evenings, I remember it so clearly, I went home. My parents, I think, were watching television and drinking tea.

C And I said, I have decided that I am going to be an architect. And they were pleased, of course. I think when any one of your children decides what they're going to do, you are happy, but a little bit surprised. I think my mother had hoped I would go more into her line of work, and my dad hoped I was going to study history and then go to law school. But I had found absolutely the right thing for me to do. And basically from that evening on, I was focused on architecture. And so wherever we traveled or whatever we did, or whenever my mom took us into the city to go to an art museum, I was busy looking at buildings.

B Well, I think you identified your passion quite right, even at that young age. What's interesting about that story of you in the summer and thinking about these homes is that I've always found it interesting how you have found the ordinary, you know, let's say an ordinary home, to be quite extraordinary, which is to say, in another way that you have viewed the ordinary as being extraordinary. And in 1998, you and Stephen Harris edited a collection of essays called the Architecture of the Everyday. Talked about the un. Monumental and, you know, architecture that is not simply swayed by stylistic fads, but is truly ordinarily extraordinary. So that was a really wonderful piece.

A Of.

B Writing and collections. And I wondered, do you think the architecture of the everyday and the thinking that you put into that book. Do you think that's still relevant?

C Good question. Yes, I do think it is still relevant. But let me very briefly decide how we describe how we ended up doing that book. Stephen, who is a dear friend and a good architect, and I would commute to New Haven together. We were both junior faculty at Yale at the time, and as we would drive up, we would comment on what we saw along the roadside. And what we were seeing was that the gas station was replaced by a chain of gas stations, or the local hamburger stand was replaced by a McDonald's, and that this fabric that was quite local was becoming generalized and generic and kind of predictable from everywhere. And we longed for, not sentimentally and not nostalgically, but more from a design standpoint, that these everyday businesses, as we started to call them, or even the everyday houses, as opposed to the developer tract houses, that that everyday stuff felt more authentic. And so we were interested in an authentic, authentic landscape that came out of the place and buildings that came out of local traditions.

C So for me, now, I would say I'm still not particularly interested in the sentimental or the nostalgic, but what we were getting at through the architecture of the everyday was a recognition of local history, a recognition of community and its ties to that local history. I think we really looked hard to find beauty and sort of compositional strategies in this kind of innocent, genuine architecture, not mass produced architecture. Loved the use of materials that also seemed very true to place and the local traditions of construction. Like, you build differently in New England than you do in New Mexico. Right? Just over time. So, you know, I've been using much more recently, and you have too, Arti. And this is a lot of what we talk about in the office and what you and I talk about when we are in deep conversations with our institutional clients is that what we aspire to now here at Tenberg is what we call an architecture of the greater good. But I think that architecture of the greater good is actually rooted in an architecture of the everyday, because the architecture of the everyday also aspires to beauty and substance and the telling of a story, but it is accessible to everybody.

C It is not exclusive in how it is a building, but inclusive in how it is a building. And that is the architecture of the everyday. And that is also a component of an architecture for the greater good.

B Yeah, we do it at Tenberg. Talk about doing architecture that is good, and we've talked about what that means to us, doing architecture that is good in terms of being imaginative, good in terms of Being sustainable. I do like the idea of thinking about authentic, which is a word that we often use, as well, as a reflection of good. And I think sometimes when we are doing architecture that's authentic, we are doing architecture, as you said, that is true to place that is so contextually and locally aligned that it could be nowhere else but there. And then there are other times when I would say learn brave enough to do authentic architecture that has a humility to it. And in a time where there's so much razzmatazz architecture, you know, I think it is a very pointed decision to do architecture that has a humility about it, that forefronts people, which is all to say, you know, I think that's what architecture of the greater good means to us as a practice here. The other thing, though, that you have talked a lot about, Deborah, is you talk about architecture and architects as empowered acts and empowered people, and that architecture has the power to affect positive change. And that empowering stance can begin as a student.

B And your career as an educator began in the 1970s, and as you said, since 1988, you've been a professor at Yale, and now you're the dean of the Yale School of Architecture and have been doing a lot of great work there. As dean, you've dedicated your efforts to broadening access and broadening architectural education. Would you talk a bit about that?

C Well, I'd love to, because I spend a lot of my time thinking about it and working on it. So I'm happy to talk about it. I think first and foremost is to underscore the importance of good design. And by that I would say what I mean by good design is a component of the greater good, that everybody in their lives is entitled to be exposed to beauty. Now, we might disagree on the finer points of what makes something beautiful, but I think we could probably all, both architects and lay people agree broadly on when something is well designed or looks good. And I think that should be part of everybody's life. So that's the joy of teaching and running a school, is to teach young people how to be good designers, how to be good architects. But I think there are other things that have to be folded into architects, architectural education that are a component of good design, because design is not solely aesthetics, but you can.

C It has to be aesthetically pleasing to be well designed, but it also needs to be sustainable and resilient. I think, particularly these days, it has to address the issues of urban life. Not every building is in a city. Most buildings in the west and in the United States at least are in cities or suburbs. And more than 50% of the world's population lives in cities. So we really have to be aware of our responsibility to the overall city. And most people don't live in the best arrondissement in Paris as their urban conditions. So we need to make urban conditions better.

C As architects, I think, and this is particularly possible at universities and architects and architectural educators need to take advantage of the environment of universities is the opportunity for cross disciplinary discussions and exchanges of ideas so we can learn from lawyers and doctors and people in public health and artists and people at the School of the Environment, for instance at Yale, and they can learn from us. But for that to happen, we have the disciplinary boundaries, teach courses together, give joint appointments to faculty members, really make cross disciplinary work a part of what we teach. And then I guess, you know, those are, those are four quick things, right? Good design, sustainability, urban responsibility and cross disciplinary discussion. But without financial aid, none of that can really happen enough. And that what I mean by financial aid is I believe in the value of higher education, I believe in the value of educating architects. Obviously I've devoted my life to it. And I think we do those things very well in the United States and they're expensive to do. And I think it should be possible for any young person who wants to be an architect to be able to study architecture without going significantly into debt, into debt so much that it will predetermine their creative opportunities.

C So one of my great goals at Yale has been to raise enough funds to provide enough financial aid for everybody who needs it. And then I think all those things together is not only what I am doing and have tried to do at Yale, but what all my colleagues across all the schools of architecture in the country are also focusing on, because this is our responsibility to the future to make sure we continue to have and improve on the built environment we provide for everybody.

B You talked about access to education and also about the increasingly interdisciplinary approach that you're taking. Do you think that both those things kind of increasing inclusion in the conversation of architecture and increasing it both in terms of people getting more people in the conversation, getting people with various lived histories as we talked about earlier, as well as different expertise, interdisciplinary expertise? I guess the question I'm trying to ask is perhaps the problems that we are also faced with and are trying to solve through architecture have become increasingly complex, or at least we're finding that complex answers maybe are producing more elegant solutions to the problems of today. So I have a question for you in that. Do you think that the Actual practice of architecture, both how we do it and the problems architecture is solving. Do you think that is changing has changed at present?

C I think the practice of architecture has been something of continuous change, both within the practice itself, because the tools we have at our disposal, from, I don't know, a ruling pen and a T square way back in two centuries ago to technology today, but also the way we build and the amount of performance we expect out of our buildings. Once upon a time, the goal of a building was to keep you dry and somewhat warm and then to allow you to do whatever task you added to do within that building, whether it was sleeping or praying, you know. But now we demand a lot of our buildings and they have to perform in a lot of ways simultaneously for a lot of different people and different uses. And we have many more tools at our disposal to design and construct those buildings now. Is it changing more rapidly now than it changed 150 years ago? Of course. But all change is as accelerated, shall we say, through time. So that how we got from the T square to the main line, I don't know how long. I am not a historian of drafting technique, but did that take longer than getting from AutoCAD 101 to Revit? I have no idea.

C But I do think big picture, we. We see an acceleration of change. That said, I think architecture remains collaborative and if anything, is becoming more broadly collaborative as we learn from more professions and need their wisdom to help us make better buildings. I think what we need to focus on in a changing world of practice is to make sure that the profession broadly continues to make it possible for small firms to grow and prosper so that young talent can start either in small places or with limited budgets or with modest clients, with the hope that if they want to grow into being the next SOM or kpf, they can. But if they want to stay small and be a very local practice and maybe be design, build or design something else that those we don't crowd that out through, however we manage the profession across the country, I think it would be great. And when we talk about changing architecture, I believe the built environment matters more than anybody in either community discussion or political discussion acknowledges. And I think we should be encouraging all architects, young and old, fresh out of school and those in retirement, to get involved in their communities because they know something about the built environment that their neighbors with other interests and other knowledge may not know. I'd say the same to a group of doctors, but I'm not a doctor, so they won't listen to Me, but we all need to be involved in our communities.

C But architects know about the built environment, and we can really bring that to the discussion. And finally, I think one can't talk about change right now in 2025 without talking about AI. No one knows what AI is going to bring to architecture, but I want to make sure that we think of AI as a tool we bring to architecture as opposed to something that get done to architecture. Right. It is a tool and not a replacement for our ability to curate and our ability to create.

B I think it's interesting what you mentioned about being sure that with these tools that we have, but also just being sure in general that there is room for small studios and young architecture firms to start. To start and do their thing. I also really appreciate and believe strongly as well that to be a good architect, being engaged in terms of your general knowledge, in terms of being an engaged citizen in your community. And even you always say, Deborah, you know, go out, see a show, you know, be. Go and engage with culture, you know, go to the museums. I think all of this are things that we should treat as precious and prerequisites to having a healthy architectural ecology in terms of practices and yours. You know, today we are a firm that does buildings for universities and colleges. We do.

B We work with nonprofits, we work with cultural institutions. But when you started the practice, Deborah, it was a small practice. And you did things, as you said small practices do, which is kind of engaged regionally in work and also at the time, and we still do this now, designing homes as well. And that's one thing I wanted to talk to you about is then, and I know from sitting, because we talk about it, you have a very special passion for designing homes. It's something you enjoy deeply. What do you enjoy so much about it?

C Maybe it goes back to walking the streets when I was 13 years old. I like designing houses. And why do I like designing houses? Because in part, it is about everyday life. I mean, there is this ongoing theme here, right? One of the things I love about a house is it's a microcosm of life in a community, which is that there are kind of layered levels of privacy from the things you do completely alone, you know, hygiene, let's say, sleep, maybe some of the time, things you do with your, you know, your intimate partners, things you do with your nuclear family, things you do with your extended family, things you do with your extended family and your circle of friends, things you do with your neighbors across your fences. It's those concentric layers of privacy. That I think makes. Makes for me as an architect, the design of a house so fascinating because for each family or each individual, there are the commonalities of that. Like we all sleep, we all eat, we all bathe, hopefully we all have friends.

C And then there are the unique aspects of that. You know, some people sleep in the utter, utter darkness. I like to sleep when I know that the sun has come up. You know, so that over weaving or that weaving together of each individual or each family's unique characteristics as sort of played against and in harmony with the shared characteristics of all living humans is something I find really deeply fascinating. So that's all in a house.

B It's interesting. Would it be possible to describe your relationship with a client, for instance, who wants to. Wants to build a home that you enjoy? You have a curiosity about how people live and a kind of empathy for how people live and how they can thrive and flourish in their homes. And that. That is interesting to you?

C It is truly, deeply interesting to me. And that connection between listening, looking and then conceiving, designing, drawing, and eventually having that become the spaces in which and the object in which they get to live their lives, I can think of nothing more fascinating and more fulfilling.

B And that kind of empathetic listening is to them, the clients, but also the land. You know, when we start to design a home, you walk the site and.

C You listen to the site, lie down on the site, maybe if it's a nice day and the grass is wet, or smell the site. Yeah, all those things. And I would say that, you know, it's interesting because we're having this conversation as though every house sits on a perfect piece of property. Sometimes it's in an old building way up in the sky. Sometimes it's in a really tightly constrained neighborhood like some of the ones in Queens or elsewhere where we've had the good fortune to design houses. So I think understanding a site and a place and you know, in what direction the sun comes up and in which direction the winds blow. And where do the beautiful sounds come from, be they the freight train or the seagull? And the not so good sounds come from like the constant honking of horns or sirens and weaving all that into a space that people can happily occupy again. I just find that so fulfilling.

B Okay, these are my last few questions and we're going to do this rapid fire. Who's your favorite non living architect?

C I have two, and they are in a constant race. Khan and Saarinen.

B Who wins today?

C Oh, well, Saarinen won about a week ago. But Khan is usually in the lead. So those two.

B Okay. What is your favorite New York City place?

C That's a great question. Many is the honest answer. If I had to choose one, I would say the New York Public Library. I mean, from the lions as you walk up to inside the space, to the idea that this extraordinary building is open to the public and full of knowledge and preserves knowledge and makes knowledge accessible. And it's a great building. I just love the public library. I said if you would let me have two. Like the Khan Saturn answer, I would say that in this neighborhood that I grew up in, in Queens, there's a certain rise in the neighborhood where you can look back and see the tallest buildings of the New York City skyline.

C And so there's this funny thing. As a kid I knew technically I lived in New York City, but the city remained Manhattan where the tall buildings were. And somehow that understanding New York as this complex tapestry of small neighborhoods and powerful world famous buildings and operations and cultural institutions and financial institutions, that juxtaposition is very meaningful to me. So I love that view.

B That sounds great. So, Evelyn, I am also a Queens resident and I have a favorite New York City place, Deborah, that I think you maybe would put on your list as well. I love Roosevelt Ave. And just the mix up of everybody and their mothers. The culture, the music, everybody's on the streets. Both the energy, the urban energy and the multiculturalism, which as a word sometimes sounds kind of banal, but in truth, when you feel it on the street, on Roseville Ave. It's alive.

C I was going to say, particularly Roosevelt Avenue. And Arthur, you. You didn't say enough about how involved you are in your community from local museums and all kinds of other community activities. So yes, and I agree with you about Roosevelt Avenue multicultural, down to the graphics and the restaurants and the languages you hear on the street. And it is completely fantastic. Yeah, but you told me I could only have one. I snuck in two and now you're telling me I can have three.

B Okay, New York City places. All right, style question for you. Black or navy?

C Ooh, both together.

B Ooh, very good.

C Yeah, the black navy combo. Wear it all at once. Push that spectrum limit as far as an architect can. Yeah. Okay. Black and navy together.

B Favorite food?

C My truly favorite food, and this is embarrassing, is popcorn, heavily salted. My second favorite food are oysters with a nice glass of a very dry champagne.

B That sounds delicious. All right, last question. And now back to getting philosophical. So if you could go back and talk to your younger self, what would you say, Deborah, Wow.

C Be patient and draw more.

B All right, I said last question. But we have one more question. What advice, Deborah, would you give to the next generation of architects?

C I would advise any young architect, and perhaps any young creative at all, stay optimistic. The days can be long and there are certain hurdles along the way that can be discouraging. But big picture, over the weeks and months of and years and decades, stay optimistic. Because designing is the most fulfilling and satisfying thing you can do with your life, I think, and is in itself.

B An optimistic act, because it is very.

C Much an optimistic act. It is a belief in the future that drives us to design, to make a better future. And so hang on to that optimism. Foreign.

A Disruptors thank you for joining us today on an episode of Practice Disrupted. If you like the content for today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practiceofarchitecture.com podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers, and other disruptors in our community community@practiceofarchitecture.com community. Our social media handle is practiceofarch. That's practiceofarch. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a DM and say hello. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.