Chancellor Rich Lyons and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Ben Hermalin recently announced that Nicholas de Monchaux has been named the new William W. Wurster Dean of the College of Environmental Design (CED) at UC Berkeley.
campus. Photo: Lucas R. Santana. Courtesy College of Environmental Design.
De Monchaux is currently the head of the Department of Architecture at MIT, where he is the Weber-Shaughnessy Professor of Architecture, a professor of urban studies and planning, and an affiliated faculty member with the program in Science, Technology and Society. De Monchaux was professor of architecture and urban design at UC Berkeley from 2006 to 2019.
Cities, Princeton Architectural Press, 2016.
De Monchaux’s creative and intellectual interests align with UC Berkeley’s forward-looking ethos and its global leadership in innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship.
installation at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, May 10–November 23, 2025.
As an academic leader at Berkeley and MIT, he helped build new relationships and programs in design (including Berkeley’s Master of Design program and MIT’s new Morningside Academy for Design), created impactful new models connecting design and research in the built environment, and helped support groundbreaking research on climate, resilience, and cities.
De Monchaux’s term as dean of the College of Environmental Design will begin on July 1, 2027. Professor Daniel G. Chatman, chair of the Department of City & Regional Planning, will serve as interim dean beginning July 1, 2026, following the retirement of Renee Y. Chow.
Fascinated by the relationships between technology and urbanism, digital simulation and world-building, sci-fi and architecture, de Monchaux is renowned as a visionary thinker about design and its relationship to society.