Mónica Ponce de León, who has successfully led Princeton’s School of Architecture for a decade, will conclude her service as dean at the end of 2025 and return to the faculty and the practice of architecture. 

Ponce de León, an award-winning architect and educator, has led the School of Architecture through a period of remarkable transformation and growth. Under her leadership, the school saw the expansion of undergraduate and graduate programs, the hiring of exceptional faculty, the introduction of innovative teaching and learning methods, and the launch of conferences and exhibitions that showcase the talents of Princeton faculty and students on a national and international stage. 

“I am grateful to Mónica Ponce de León for her many achievements as dean of the Princeton School of Architecture,” President Christopher L. Eisgruber said. “She has been a dynamic leader for the School, an effective champion for this University’s values, and a tremendous partner for her Cabinet colleagues and me during her decade at the School’s helm.”

Ponce de León, who also serves as a professor of architecture, is founding principal of the architecture and design firm MPdL Studio. She is known as a pioneer in the incorporation of robotic fabrication in architecture.

“Princeton and the School of Architecture are truly extraordinary. I have been lucky to work with such remarkable students, an unparalleled faculty and a dedicated staff,” Ponce de León said.  “It has also been a privilege to work alongside President Eisgruber and so many other colleagues at the University.”

The School of Architecture serves as Princeton’s center for teaching and research in architectural design, history and theory, technologies, and urbanism. It offers undergraduate, master’s and doctoral programs in which students and faculty benefit from interdisciplinary partnerships at Princeton and across the field of architecture.

The provost will oversee a process to select the next dean of the school.

An innovative architect and educator

Ponce de León is an acclaimed designer and educator who connects scholarship and research with architecture practice. She has been recognized throughout her career as an innovator in the field of architecture and within higher education. 

She helped expand the School of Architecture’s undergraduate and graduate programs, including doubling the number of students participating in the undergraduate and professional master’s degree programs and launching undergraduate minors in architecture and civil engineering and in urban studies. She led the faculty in revising the undergraduate curriculum to expand the centrality of design. She instituted a nation-leading co-teaching model of instruction in the professional degree master’s program and, together with the faculty, she reshaped the post-professional master’s program into a two-year course of study that culminates in a student group show in New York City, open to the public.  Ponce de León also strengthened the Ph.D. program, increasing the number of Ph.D. faculty.

As dean, Ponce de León developed new exhibition programs to highlight the remarkable scholarship and creative practices of Princeton faculty, with exhibits that traveled nationally and internationally to venues such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the Venice Biennale, among others. 

She also helped develop a series of new conferences and symposia, including an annual student-organized conference, Women in Design and Architecture, which shed new light on figures such as Norma Merrick Sklarek, Minnette de Silva, Lina Bo Bardi and Helen Liu Fong, among others.

During her tenure, the school completed the Embodied Computation Lab, which is dedicated to advanced architectural research, fabrication and robotics, as well as a large-scale transformation of the studio spaces to enhance collaboration. Ponce de León also expanded access to cutting-edge technologies for research, instruction and design.

Ponce de León said she was particularly proud of how she led the school through the COVID-19 pandemic, implementing safety measures so campus studios could remain available to architecture students. 

She is the recipient of the prestigious Cooper Hewitt/Smithsonian National Design Award in Architecture. In 2016, she was inducted into the National Academy of Design in recognition of her “exceptional contributions to American art and architecture.” 

Her other honors include the Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the USA Target Fellowship in Architecture and Design from United States Artists; the Harleston Parker Medal from the Boston Society for Architecture; and several Progressive Architecture Awards. She also received the excellence in teaching award from the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA).

Her work has been exhibited in venues including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and she has curated many international exhibitions, including co-curating the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Before joining Princeton in 2016, Ponce de León served as dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan from 2008 to 2015. She taught for 12 years at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, where she was a professor and served as the Graduate Program coordinator and was director of the Digital Fabrication Lab. 

Ponce de León earned her master of architecture in urban design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and her bachelor of architecture from the University of Miami.