Harriet Harriss (RIBA, FAIA, PhD) is a qualified architect, writer, and historian, and Dean of the Pratt School of Architecture in Brooklyn, New York. Prior to this, she led the Architecture Research Program at the Royal College of Art in London until 2015 and the Masters in Architecture Program at Oxford Brookes from 2009-2015.
Her scholarship principally concerns the pioneering pedagogies architectural education and confronts themes such as feminism; equity, decolonization, diversity and inclusion; civic engagement; the climate crisis, and queer ecologies.
After graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2003, Harriss established Design Heroine Architects - a participatory design practice that won start-up funding for its social innovation objectives from NESTA in 2004.
Throughout her academic career, Harriet won various awards for teaching and research, including, a Diawa Foundation Fellowship, two Santander Awards, a Brookes Teaching Fellowship, a Winston Churchill Fellowship, and a HEA Internationalisation fellowship. In 2016, Harriss was awarded a Clore Fellowship for cultural leadership, elected to the European Association of Architectural Education Council (EAAE) in summer 2017, and in 2018, awarded a Principal Fellowship of the UK's Higher Education Academy.
Harriet's consultancy roles include the UK Department for Education construction industry T-Level panel, international program validations, external examining, and pedagogy design and development. From 2018-2020, Harriet Harriss chaired the RIBA's prestigious Dissertation Medal judging panel and in 2016, secured a 500k Euro research grant from Erasmus to lead an international consortium investigating the trans-sector applications of an architecture degree.
Harriss has spoken across a wide range of media channels (from the BBC, Fox News, and Monocle Radio to TEDx) on the wider issues facing the built environment. Harriss is also recognized as an advocate for diversity and inclusion within design education and was nominated by Dezeen as a champion for women in architecture and design in 2019. Her books include Architecture Live Projects: pedagogy into practice (2015), Radical Pedagogies: Architectural Education & the British Tradition (2015), A Gendered Profession (2016), Interior Futures (2019), Architects After Architecture (2020), Greta Magnusson Grossman: Modern Design From Sweden To California (2020). Her forthcoming books include Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South (2021), The Architecture of the Post-Anthropocene (2022).
In 2021, Pratt School of Architecture became the only school in the United States to hold both NAAB and RIBA accreditation, affirming its commitment to the internationalisation of education; attracting talent from across the world, and its commitment toward offering its graduates an unrivaled opportunity for its to live, work, practice and pioneer both at home and abroad.
Academic and professional qualifications
- PhD in Architecture, Oxford Brookes University, 2014
- Chartered Architect, RIBA, UK 2007-
- Kingston University, Architecture & Professional Practice (Part III), Sept 2007, Distinction
- Architectural Association, PG(Dip) Building Conservation, July 2006, Martin Caroe Award
- Royal College of Art, MA(RCA) Architecture + Interiors RIBA Part 2, RCA Bursary, Thesis Distinction
- Manchester University, BA (Hons) Architecture, June 2001, First Class