Venezuela: Mónica Ponce de León
Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Mónica Ponce de León is the first woman and first Latin American to serve as dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey (2016-2025). She is also the founding principal architect at MPdL Studio, which is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Boston, Massachusetts; New York, New York; and Princeton (2011–). Ponce de León holds a bachelor of architecture from the University of Miami in Miami, Florida, and a master of architecture in urban design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has been a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1996–2008), also serving as director of the Digital Fabrication Lab, and as the Graduate Program coordinator. She also served as dean and Eliel Saarinen Collegiate Professor of the Taubman College at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (2008–2015), and taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, California; the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island; the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia; and Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.
Ponce de León and Nader Tehrani co-founded Office dA, based in Boston (1991–2010). In affiliation with the firm, Ponce de León earned numerous awards including the National Design Award in Architecture issued by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum (2007), and the Harleston Parker Medal from the Boston Society of Architects (2002). Ponce de León has also exhibited and curated her work for various institutions: Office dA exhibited an installation at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1998); and Ponce de León with Cynthia Davidson co-curated the U.S. Pavilion exhibition “The Architectural Imagination” at the 15th International Venice Architecture Biennale (2016). Amongst her other accomplishments, in affiliation with MPdL Studio, Ponce de León was named one of the “Top 100 Most Influential Latinas” by Latino Leaders Magazine (2020), earned the Women in Architecture Award in the “Educator / Mentor” category from the Architectural Record (2020), earned the Teaching Award of Excellence from the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA, 2018), was inducted into the National Academy of Design (2016), was named a USA Target Fellow in Architecture and Design (2007), and earned an Academic Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2002); she has also earned numerous awards from the American Institute of Architects.
References
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