Image in modal.

Architect and educator Deborah Berke has been named as the recipient of the 2025 AIA Gold Medal. The most prestigious annual honor bestowed by the American Institute of Architects, the Gold Medal recognizes an individual whose “significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.” Queens-born Berke, who founded the New York–based TenBerke (previously Deborah Berke and Partners) in 1982, is not a stranger to AIA award programs. In addition to the numerous project-based accolades presented to her namesake practice by AIA national and local chapters, in 2022 she was awarded the profession’s highest honor for architectural education, the Topaz Medallion (co-presented with the Asssociation of Collegiate Schools of Architecture). The previous year, Berke, who has served as dean of the Yale School of Architecture since 2016, received RECORD’s 2021 Women in Architecture Educator Award in recognition of her dedication to increasing diversity among students and faculty, boosting financial aid initiatives, championing sustainability, and more deeply engaging the community around Yale. Succeeding Robert A.M. Stern, Berke is the first woman to lead the school in its 100-plus-year history.

princeton residential colleges.

Residential colleges at Princeton University. Photo © Christopher Payne/Esto

“She has combined design excellence, academic leadership, and a commitment to social and environmental responsibility,” wrote the AIA in its announcement of Berke’s Gold Medal Win, noting her “profound influence on architectural pedagogy” and distinct approach to architecture that “celebrates the extraordinary within the ordinary.” She joins recent past Gold Medal awardees including David Lake and Ted Flato, Carol Ross Barney, Angela Brooks and Lawrence Scarpa, and Marlon Blackwell.

Encompassing a wide range of scales and typologies, her firm’s built work frequently foregrounds sustainable design like with the all-electric, mass-timber Brook Street Residence Halls at Brown University. In a similar vein, in 2022, Berke’s practice completed its largest project to date: a pair of residential colleges at Princeton that will be used by the university to reach a goal of carbon neutrality by 2046. Berke and her practice have also been recognized for championing adaptive reuse, a subject she writes about in impassioned detail in the 2023 book, co-written by Thomas de Monchaux, Transform: Promising Places, Second Chances, and the Architecture of Transformational Change. Whether it be resuscitating a derelict factory building in New Haven as a community-anchored arts incubator or giving second life to a landmarked 19th-century Buffalo asylum as a swanky hotel, Berke sees old and often unloved buildings as being ripe for creative redeployment. In that mold, the firm’s work for 21C Museum Hotels has garnered acclaim for championing rehabilitation over the wrecking ball: auto assembly plants, warehouses, bank buildings, and faded historic hotels are all now buzzy boutique properties.

Richardson Hotel.

The Richardson Olmsted Campus in Buffalo. Photo © Christopher Payne/Esto

In addition to ambitious higher-ed housing schemes and reuse-centered hospitality projects, Berke’s firm has completed office towers in Indianapolis, residential high-rises in Manhattan, and a slew of single-family homes in locales ranging from Long Island to Fort Lauderdale. Notable institutional projects include the Lewis Law Center at Harvard Law School, the Rockefeller Arts Center at SUNY Fredonia, the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and 122 Community Arts Center. Although it is one of the firm’s smaller-scale commissions, Berke’s drive-through Irwin Union Bank (2006) in Columbus, Indiana, has an outsized reputation on-screen thanks to the 2017 dramatic film Columbus.

In 2023, Berke’s firm, operating as Berke and Partners since 2002, announced its relaunch as TenBerke. “. . . Since the very beginning, we’ve never had the—I’ll call it ‘imperial’ model,” Berke told RECORD. “I am not an empress. I am never the only one talking. That’s just not how we work. Nor is it how we present ourselves to the world or how we relate to our clients.”

Outside of the AIA (and RECORD), Berke has received various honors including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and the Berkeley-Rupp Prize. In 2022, she was elected to both the National Academy of Design and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Berke was appointed to the jury of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2019.

“Throughout her career, Berke has exemplified the power of architecture to transform lives and communities,” writes the AIA. “Her work, teaching, and advocacy collectively underscore a profound belief in design as a tool for social good, leaving an indelible mark on the field and inspiring a more inclusive and sustainable architectural future.”

As the latest Gold Medalist, Berke will be honored in June at the 2025 AIA Conference for Architecture & Design in Boston. In addition to the Gold Medal, the AIA has also announced California- and Texas-based LPA Design Studios as the 2025 recipient of the coveted Firm of the Year Award.