NEW YORK — New School University named Paul Goldberger as dean of the Parsons School of Design on Thursday, replacing Randy Swearer, who had been dean since 1999.
Goldberger is a well-known architecture critic and author, having written for more than three decades. Since 1997, he has been architecture critic for the New Yorker and will continue to write for the magazine following his appointment at Parsons, where he begins on July 1.
“As a critic and writer, I have spent much of my life trying to show what architecture and design mean in a broader world, and I see the mission of Parsons as being similar — connecting design to the world, keeping it fresh and giving it meaning for our time,” Goldberger said in a statement.
Goldberger is also a former executive editor of Architectural Digest and spent 25 years at the New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for his architecture criticism in 1984. He has previously instructed classes on architecture at the Yale School of Architecture and the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
His published works include “The City Observed — New York: An Architectural Guide to Manhattan;” “The Skyscraper, On the Rise: Architecture and Design in a Post-Modern Age,” and “Up From Zero: Politics, Architecture and the Rebuilding of New York,” which is planned for publication in the fall.
A spokeswoman for the school said that Swearer, whose contract is expiring, had chosen to step down as dean to focus on writing, research and teaching projects.