The crowd applauds for Brett Steele, newly installed dean of the USC School of Architecture. (USC Photo/Steve Cohn)
New USC School of Architecture dean honored at installation ceremony
Brett Steele, a former Bruin who led the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, received an official Trojan welcome.
When world-renowned architect Brett Steele was announced as the new dean of the USC School of Architecture late last year, his interdisciplinary approach to architectural education was highlighted as one of his most unique and significant leadership qualities.
On Wednesday afternoon — in front of a banquet hall of his colleagues, family, students and friends — Steele explained why interdisciplinarity is a vital priority in his vision for the school.
“The 21st century is being built through all kinds of new, interdisciplinary, collaborative forms of discovery, practice and research,” Steele said. “Our school just happens to have that impulse already built into its DNA, and it’s simply waiting for us to leverage it.”
Steele was officially installed as dean of the School of Architecture during a ceremony at Town and Gown on the University Park Campus on Wednesday but assumed the new role on Feb. 1. He also holds the Della & Harry MacDonald Dean’s Chair in Architecture. Steele succeeded interim Dean Willow Bay, who leads the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Bay served in the interim position following Milton Curry’s decision to step down at the end of the 2022 academic year.
USC President Carol Folt lauded Steele’s accomplishments when he was dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, where he oversaw 14 degree-awarding programs in four academic departments, two world-renowned museums and the Center for the Art of Performance.
“I bring these [accomplishments] up because I think they show you in every way how collaborative Brett is, and we have already seen that here at USC,” Folt said, noting the partnerships he has begun to forge with USC’s conservatory-level arts schools and museums. “He’s a global citizen for the ultimate global profession, for a profession that looks forward all the time, for a profession that depends on the innovation of its community. We are just so excited to have Brett with us. He’s a doer. He’s a connector.”
“He comes to us from UCLA — and we’re not holding that against him,” she added with a smile.
A global perspective: New USC architecture dean
The first in his family to attend a university, Steele grew up in Oregon and Idaho, attending art and architecture schools on the West Coast before founding his own architectural offices in New York City and London, where he became a naturalized British citizen. While in London, he graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture before being elected as the 19th director of that school, one of the world’s most influential schools of architecture.
As director of the AA, Steele oversaw all full- and part-time academic programs, the association’s global membership, and two subsidiary companies: AA Publications and the Hooke Park Educational Trust. Steele’s contributions during his tenure include the launch of a worldwide visiting school that operated dozens of schools across five continents and in more than 50 cities.
Steele said that after moving from Europe to Los Angeles with his family in 2017, he gave a lot of thought to a line by the novelist Alison Lurie: “As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future.”
He sees his role leading the USC School of Architecture as one grounded in the school’s sense of place in a global city with the world’s largest creative economy. “Southern California is a big, big idea,” Steele said. “It’s one full of promise, one with real challenges, for sure, but also one that continues to be filled with true possibility.”
The dean will bring his global experience to bear on what he called the School of Architecture’s “incredible constellation of programs.” The school grants degrees not just in architecture but in building science, heritage conservation, landscape architecture and urbanism, and offers study abroad opportunities in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
New USC architecture dean’s blueprint for the future
Leveraging the School of Architecture’s interdisciplinary breadth to meet 21st-century challenges was one of three priorities Steele outlined for his tenure.
Another priority he detailed is mindfully growing the physical spaces that the School of Architecture inhabits. In past leadership roles at UCLA and the AA, Steele spearheaded efforts that enlarged the physical footprint of these schools. But at USC, Steele plans to focus first on exploiting existing resources. He laid out his vision to “simplify, clarify and curate before we start thinking about expanding and growing and building,” he said.
He pointed out the creative ways in which the School of Architecture’s two neighboring and connected buildings have been transformed over the decades. “We’ve added floors, erected footbridges, carved out stairs, filled in double-story volumes with new floors, and we’ve squeezed in a few tons of air-handling and other equipment into every possible square foot of our century-long home,” Steele said. “This kind of low-cost and, I believe, deeply ethical attitude about repair and recovery is what I’m imagining here.”
The third priority he described is to allow the School of Architecture’s growth to evolve organically from the innovative work being done by the community. “A great school of architecture is only ever defined by the projects and the many kinds of work unfolding with the personalities, the projects and the pedagogies that make that moment exactly what it is now,” Steele said. “This [approach] has the immense advantage of letting us measure and communicate ourselves by the work we do, and not just the things we say.”
Built-in community
Even as Steele outlined that path ahead for the School of Architecture, he extended gratitude to colleagues who have paved the way for him to serve as dean. He thanked Bay and Provost Andrew T. Guzman for helping to ease his transition into leadership. Steele called Folt’s invitation for him to join the Trojan Family “the highlight of my life.”
He recalled that during Folt’s State of the University address in March, she quoted a line from Winston Churchill that deeply resonated with him: “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”
Elaborating upon this sentiment, Steele closed his remarks by humbly suggesting that USC’s built environment is the truest measure of its greatness. “[The university’s] rooms remind us of what a school is really about, much more than anything a newly installed architecture dean could ever possibly say,” Steele said. “They’re the ‘installations’ that really bring us all together in very real and enduring ways.”
