Alejandro Zaera-Polo, international architect and scholar, has been selected as the next dean of Princeton University’s School of Architecture.

Zaera-Polo has been a visiting lecturer in architecture at Princeton since 2008. His appointment as dean, which requires approval of the University’s Board of Trustees, will be effective July 1. He will succeed Stan Allen, the school’s dean since 2002, who will step down at the end of this academic year to return to full-time teaching and architectural design.

Zaera-Polo was selected by a seven-member committee including Elizabeth Diller, Beatriz Colomina, Hal Foster, Barry Bergdoll and Bernard Tschumi.

Zaera-Polo is the founder and principal of Alejandro Zaera-Polo Architecture, an international practice based in London and Barcelona. He was a founding partner of London-based Foreign Office Architects. His award-winning projects include the Yokohama International Cruise Terminal in Japan, which is noted for its interplay of architecture, landscape and nature. Among his other notable projects are a building for the Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in the United Kingdom, the Carabanchel social housing project in Madrid, the Meydan retail complex and multiplex in Istanbul, the Spanish Pavilion at the 2005 International Expo in Aichi, Japan, and the Dulnyouk Publishing headquarters in Paju, South Korea.

While maintaining his international practice, Zaera-Polo has also played a significant role in the academic discipline of architecture. In addition to his teaching at Princeton, he has served as dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, and currently occupies the Berlage Chair at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the Norman R. Foster Visiting Professorship of Architectural Design at Yale University. As a theorist, his writing has appeared in international publications such as El Croquis, Quaderns, A+U, Arch+, Volume and Log.

Zaera-Polo is a graduate of the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid and holds a master’s degree in architecture from Harvard University.