Ralph Stern

Dean Ralph Stern

Professional and Administration Accomplishments (continued)

Ralph Stern championed the development of a Faculty Digital Fabrication Lab (FabLab), bringing in international experts to speak to the integration of leading-edge technology with pedagogy. In turn, this initiative enabled collaboration with other Faculties and models of proposed cooperation receiving significant support from the University administration. Additionally, Dean Stern fostered the first Partner-in-Residence Program in the Faculty’s history with Manitoba Hydro, further enhancing Faculty research in areas of sustainable and energy efficient design.

In his tenure as Dean, the Faculty has consistently maintained a balanced budget, has engaged in an extensive consultative process resulting in the Faculty’s first Strategic Plan in alignment with the University’s Strategic Priorities, developed a Faculty-wide Workload Allocation Matrix, consistently supported student participation in the award-winning Warming Huts competitions, consistently supported students in producing the award-winning Warehouse publication, created the Faculty’s first Dean’s Lecture Series, facilitated the first program review of the Environmental Design Program since its creation (as Environmental Studies, 1966), and facilitated the first graduate program reviews in Architecture and Interior Design since these programs were created.

Fundamentally, both as Dean of the Faculty and as a member of faculty, Ralph Stern has embraced the University’s pledge to “work with a variety of partners to make Winnipeg the national centre of excellence in Indigenous education, and in particular to allow Indigenous students to be prepared for and to achieve educational success in the full range of academic programs we provide.” Further, he has actively engaged the University’s challenge to “Indigenize the curriculum”, developing relationships with internal and external partners to better engage stakeholders marginalized far too long.

Prior to entering academia, Ralph Stern worked both in construction, developing essential “hands-on” work experience, and for many years on projects of various scales for renowned architectural firms such as Richard Meier & Partners and Kohn Pederson Fox (New York), has done professional design consulting for large scale projects and has successfully participated in multiple international design competitions. Organizational talents developed in working with stakeholders ranging from connoisseurs to corporate clients, from individual craftsman to construction consortiums, and from day laborers to trade unions enabled the acquisition of a highly diverse and flexible set of administrative skills.

Dean Ralph Stern

Teaching and Research Accomplishments (continued)

Ralph Stern has a significant track record of research in the area of History, Theory, and Criticism with presentations in the United States at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, MIT, University of Chicago, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Dallas Architecture Forum. In Europe he has lectured at the Architectural Association London, University of Edinburgh, Cambridge University, American Academy in Rome / Bibliotheca Hertziana, Werner Oechslin Foundation, Art Historical Institute of Heidelberg University, Berlin Academy of the Arts, and the Bauhaus University Weimar among many other venues.

His research development at the University of Manitoba reflects a commitment to Indigenous Achievement, thereby complementing and extending his ongoing research on architectural, landscape, and urban representation. In the service of understanding architecture within a matrix of social, cultural, and environmental concerns, his research intersects areas of science and technology, history and aesthetics, memory and identity as well as geographic exploration and environmental exploitation. The addition of an Indigenous perspective together with concerns for decolonization and environmental justice has enriched a multifaceted research agenda.

Ralph Stern has published in numerous international journals, including the AAFiles, Architectura, Kritische Berichte, Daidalos, Bauwelt, and Cinema Journal as well as in various anthologies including Out of Ground Zero (ed. J. Ockman), The Return of Landscape (ed. D. Valentien), and Die Farbe Weiß (ed. Klaus J. Philipp). He co-edited a volume on new embassies in Berlin (Foreign Affairs) and, with Nicole Huber, co-authored Urbanizing the Mojave Desert: Las Vegas, excerpted in multiple journals. His photographs of processes of urbanization in the American West have been exhibited internationally (DAZ; German Center for Architecture, PURL; Phoenix Urban Research Lab) and he is co-editing an anthology on urban development entitled Visionary Urbanism: Representations of the Postwar American West. In 2014 he, together with long-term German collaborator Nicole Huber (University of Washington), published a co-authored essay in the anthology entitled Transnationalism and the German City, also excerpted in Places Journal.