Innovation-minded Ingeborg Rocker has been appointed Chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture | News | Archinect

Innovation-minded Ingeborg Rocker has been appointed Chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture

Photo: Ingeborg Rocker/Princeton University

The School of Architecture at Georgia Tech University has announced the appointment of Ingeborg Rocker as its new Chair and William Harrison Professor of Architecture effective September 1st.

Rocker joins Georgia Tech after working in the software industry and holding separate academic positions at the Harvard GSD between 2005 and 2020. She co-founded her own Boston and Hong Kong-based practice, Rocker-Lange, in 2006, and will now look to enhance the school’s highly-technical course offerings by leveraging a reputation for engineering and building science that has long been associated with the 137-year-old Atlanta institution. 

“At its core, architecture is trans-disciplinary,” she explained in a university press release, “ranging from vision and design innovation to technical and material realization. It is a unique discipline that can be theoretical, abstract, and discursive while at the same time pragmatic, technical, and material.”

This approach will take the form of a new Sustainable Industry Innovation research lab (the school’s sixth) that Rocker will lead the establishment of in line with a “vision for the School’s academic programs [that] connects the humanities with the sciences, engineering, art, and design.”

Rocker said she was looking forward to incorporating campus visits from alumni to discuss their practices and how recent advances in technology “have prompted significant adaptation for architects.” She then cited former faculty member Chuck Eastman, who is generally regarded as a pioneer of early BIM software development, as an inspiration and added that she was dully interested in pursuing external projects with the city of Atlanta in a way that “codifies our life quality and behaviors across the urban and rural, through Georgia and the nation.”

“In addition to her deep knowledge of architecture as a scholar, educator, and practitioner, Ingeborg Rocker brings extensive and exciting industry experience and perspectives that will benefit our architecture program immensely, particularly in relation to inter-disciplinary research,”  Ellen Bassett, the new Dean of the College of Design and John Portman Chair said finally. “I believe she will be a catalytic leader and I look forward to working with her.”

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