The Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts selected Craig Barton to fill The Design School's director seat beginning in the fall semester.
Barton will be leaving his position as University of Virginia's architecture and landscape architecture department chair.
Herberger Institute executive dean Michael Underhill said when he began looking for a new Design School director he wanted to find someone who could be a leader.
"The Design School has great strengths," Underhill said. "The Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts is really set up to do interdisciplinary work with research and teaching work. We wanted a leader who could really take advantage of that."
He said Barton would help The Design School to compete with top-notch East Coast architecture and design schools.
Underhill said The Design School’s current director, Darren Petrucci, will return to a faculty position and work with the master's degree design program.
"Darren Petrucci did a great job and took the school through some really difficult times with structuring budget cuts," Underhill said. "He wanted to get back to urban design."
Petrucci, the "Suncorp Professor for Sustainable Urbanism," said he was leaving the position on a high note and looked forward to contributing to the school in a number of ways.
"I will be pursuing funded research projects and have a book proposal in the works," Petrucci said. "I think that I speak for the faculty of the school when I say we are excited about the continued and future success of the school under Craig Barton's leadership."
Barton said he was impressed with The Design School faculty's commitment to University President Michael Crow's message of making ASU the next great public institution.
"I've taught in public institutions for the bulk of my career," Barton said. "I'm excited by the way in which the president has crafted a vision that has broader access for students at the undergraduate level without diminishing the quality of research and scholarship."
He said the school's central location relative to Phoenix provided an outlet by which to explore the challenges of growing cities.
"Phoenix is not by any means a generic city," Barton said. "I think that there's a great opportunity here in terms of the ability of the school to reach out beyond its boundaries and connect with local constituents and national constituents who have similar problems of growing cities in arid regions."
He said the school's quality faculty, size of programs and range of interdisciplinary offerings made it an attractive offer.
"I would hope that the kinds of experiences as I've had as a faculty member, as a scholar and as a designer would be useful as I work with colleagues at The Design School to build an even more robust transdisciplinary culture," Barton said. "There's one there already and I hope to build one that is equally, if not more exciting."
Reach the reporter at dgrobmei@asu.edu
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