Professional Summary
Stephanie Z. Pilat is dean of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP). Pilat is an award-winning scholar and nationally recognized educator. Pilat’s research and teaching center on design pedagogy, creativity, and the history of twentieth-century architecture and urbanism. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, a Rome Prize from the American Academy, a Fulbright Fellowship, the American Association of University Women, a Wolfsonian-FIU fellowship, and a Bogliasco Fellowship. She has been named one of the "30 most admired educators" by DesignIntelligence magazine. She holds a professional degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati and a Master of Sciences and Ph.D. in architectural history and theory from the University of Michigan.
Pilat's current scholarship centers on the American School of Architecture, where she has built a collaborative research community producing influential exhibitions and publications. The team's recent exhibition, "Outré West: The American School of Architecture from Oklahoma to California" at the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, advanced new understanding of this influential pedagogical movement. The American School team’s roster of projects include the 2020 Renegades exhibition and an installation at the 2018 Venice Biennale. Pilat co-edited the exhibition catalog, Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture, which was awarded the 2021 Oklahoma Book Award for Design and Illustration, an honorable mention for the 2022 Society of Architectural Historians Exhibition Catalog Award and was a finalist for the College Art Association’s 2021 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Exhibition Catalogs.
Pilat’s first book "Reconstructing Italy: The Ina-Casa Neighborhoods of the Postwar Era," was awarded the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize and translated into Italian. Pilat co-edited The Routledge Companion Guide to Fascist Italian Architecture and Urbanism: Reception and Legacy with Professor Kay Bea Jones, which brought together the research of over 40 international scholars to consider how the fascist legacy in the built environment has been transformed and renegotiated.