Newswise — Michael Speaks has been named dean of the University of Kentucky College of Design. Speaks is former director of the Graduate Program and founding director of the Metropolitan Research and Design Postgraduate Program at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. Speaks also heads Big Soft Orange, a Dutch-American urban research group based in Rotterdam and Los Angeles. He was the founding editor of the cultural journal Polygraph and a former editor at Architecture New York and a+u (Tokyo), and currently serves as a contributing editor for Architectural Record.
An educator, researcher and editor, Speaks has served numerous institutions here in the U.S. and abroad. With a bachelor's degree from the University of Mississippi and a doctorate from Duke University, Speaks went on to serve as a research fellow from 1994-1995 as part of the architecture faculty at the Technological University at Delft in the Netherlands. Visiting faculty positions followed at such institutions as Yale School of Art, Harvard University, Columbia University, University of Michigan " Ann Arbor, The Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and University of California " Los Angeles.
Outside the classroom, the influential Los Angeles based writer and critic has published and lectured internationally on art, architecture, urban design and scenario planning. His essays and exhibitions in the 1990s were among the first to introduce a new generation of Dutch architects and planners to a broader audience in the U.S. Speaks has also played an important role in recent debates about city branding and alternative models of city planning, authoring a number of essays and advisory studies as well as overseeing scenario studies commissioned by city and regional governments in the Netherlands. More recently, Speaks has been at the center of debates about the role innovation and prototyping plays in design and has written a number of influential essays that argue for the importance of what he calls "design intelligence," or the various forms of design knowledge generated during design but which are often overlooked in favor of "the design." Such intelligence, Speaks argues, offers an important area for design research, especially in an increasingly knowledge-based economy. One tangible result of this approach to design research and prototyping can be seen in the first International Concrete Design Competition for Students 2003/2004, sponsored by a consortium of European cement producers and directed by Speaks.
Speaks succeeds David Mohney, who served as dean from January 1994 to June 2007 and David Biagi who served as acting dean in the interim.
Provost Kumble Subbaswamy praised both for their leadership, noting that during Mohney's tenure UK brought together Architecture, Interior Design and Historic Preservation to form a new College of Design, opening up new opportunities for collaboration internally and externally. "Dr. Michael Speaks brings a broad, multidisciplinary perspective on the role of design in modern society, and is ideally suited to build on this foundation in pursuit of UK's Top 20 goals," said Subbaswamy. "His national and international connections in the professional world of design will serve UK's design students."
Speaks will begin his tenure at UK in February. Biagi, the acting dean, will remain director of the UK School of Architecture.
"Speaks is a wonderful selection to lead the UK College of Design," said Biagi. "His research and writings are extremely influential in architecture, especially the field of contemporary design. He will further the innovative work UK College of Design is already doing in the Commonwealth, the nation and abroad."
"I am honored and thrilled to be named dean of the College of Design. There are very few schools anywhere in the world today with the kind of resources, talent and commitment to excellence that I found during my visits to Lexington this last year," said Speaks. "All of the ingredients to make a world class College of Design are already here and I look forward to working with students, faculty, staff and the administration to doing just that. Indeed, there are a number of initiatives underway and on the horizon that will transform the College of Design at the University of Kentucky into a leading center of design innovation."
For more information on the UK College of Design, visit http://www.uky.edu/design.
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