Mohsen Mostafavi Dean of the College of Architecture, Art & Planning Cornell University
	"Building Books: Odyssey to Ithaca"

Mohsen Mostafavi is Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University. Mostafavi studied at London's Architectural Association (AA) and the University of Cambridge. On the heels of two successful terms as chairman of the AA, London's leading school of architecture, Mostafavi's recent Cornell appointment crowns an already prestigious career that includes a stint as director of the Master of Architecture 1 Program at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. A much-recognized author, he also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Cambridge and the Frankfurt Academy of Fine Arts. A member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architects' Registration Board of the United Kingdom, Cornell's new dean served on the Royal Institute of British Architects' Gold Medal Selection Committee and is a member of the steering committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Commenting on the news of the appointment, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas, who did graduate work at Cornell, said, "After establishing the AA as one of today's greatest schools, Mohsen Mostafavi, I am sure, will help to write an exciting new chapter for Cornell." Mostafavi is credited with bringing breadth and innovation to the highly influential London school, which has produced such stars as Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid, among others. Colleagues and peers agree that Mostafavi brought the British school up to speed technologically, instilled financial stability and forged critical alliances with other leading institutions. Koolhaas called him "an excellent academic leader on campus, open to developments, sharp, respectful and respected." Mostafavi's projects and writings underscore a keen interest in building surfaces and how they change over time. Surface Architecture, a book by Mostafavi with David Leatherbarrow (MIT Press, 2002), received the CICA Bruno Zevi Book Award 2003 for the most significant contribution to architectural criticism. His book On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time, also with Leatherbarrow (MIT Press, 1993), won the American Institute of Architects' commendation prize for writing on architectural theory. He is the co-author of Delayed Space, with Homa Farjadi (Princeton Architectural Press, 1994). Mostafavi edited and contributed to a number of publications, among them Approximations: The Architecture of Peter Märkli (MIT Press, 2002) and Logique Visuelle, a book on architecture and fashion. He has published in such prestigious journals as Architectural Review, Arquitectura and Daidalos. He edited and contributed to Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape (2004) and the forthcoming Structure as Space, on the work of the Swiss engineer Jurg Conzett (both with AA Publications). [source credit: cornell.edu] Music in this podcast, "Technical Books" by Francine is used by kind permission of Q Division Records.