Sarah M. Whiting has been the Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 2019. She served as the Dean of Rice University's School of Architecture from 2010 to 2019. She is also a design principal and co-founder of WW Architecture.
Professor Whiting received a Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture, urban history and theory from Yale University, a Master of Architecture from Princeton University in 1990, and a Doctor of Philosophy in the History and Theory of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001. Professor Whiting worked with the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and with Peter Eisenman in New York. She has taught design, history, theory and criticism at additional institutions, including Princeton University, the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Kentucky and the University of Florida. She frequently lectures throughout the US and abroad, and regularly serves as a critic of architecture and urban design.
Professor Whiting’s research is broadly interdisciplinary, with the built environment at its core. An expert in architectural theory and urbanism, she has particular interests in modern and contemporary architecture’s relationship with politics, economics and society, and how the built environment shapes the nature of public life. Her work has been published in leading journals and collections. She is also the founding editor of Point, a book series aimed at shaping contemporary discussions in architecture and urbanism.
Professor Whiting’s writings have been published in journals ranging from ANY to Wired, as well as in collections including Shaping the City, Mies in America, Six Authors in Search of an Architect, and An Architecture for all Senses: The Work of Eileen Gray. She edited Differences, a collection of essays by Ignasi de Solà-Morales, and served as reviews editor for the journal Assemblage from 1996 to 2001. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals LOG, The Plan and Thresholds.
Professor Whiting served on the Steering Committee for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2022.
