Ila Berman, director of the Architecture Program at CCA and principal of studioMatrixx, is an architect and architectural theorist who holds a doctorate in architectural history, theory, and criticism from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.

Dr. Berman is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Medal for Design, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Fellowships, and the J. P. Herndon Traveling Fellowship where she conducted research on contemporary urban and architectural landscapes in Paris and Barcelona. She was the 2005 recipient of the President's Award at Tulane University, where she was associate dean of the Tulane School of Architecture until December 2007.

Dr. Berman has directed many travel initiatives, including the Central European Travel Program in Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and Basel, as well as a Watercities program in the Netherlands, Venice, and Barcelona/Bilbao. In December 2005 Dr. Berman completed, with Joan Busquets and Felipe Correa, the collaborative New Orleans: Strategies for a City in Soft Land (Harvard University), the result of a research project that focused on the urban, infrastructural, and environmental conditions of the evolution of New Orleans.

She also was the founding director and principal investigator of URBANbuild—an outreach architectural and urban design program for which she received a $300,000 HUD/URAP grant, as well as the author of URBANbuild Local/Global, a publication about the work of this program. In addition to her design installations at the Contemporary Art Center, the Ogden Museum, and the Perloff Gallery, among others, Dr. Berman also created New Orleans: Urban Mappings for a Future City, an exhibition in the U.S. Pavilion at the 2006 International Architectural Biennale in Venice.

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Director, Architecture
Professor, Architecture

BArch, Carleton University; MDesS, DDes, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.