Dr. Stephanie Z. Pilat
Education
University of Michigan
PhD, Architectural History and Theory
University of Michigan
MS, Architectural History and Theory
University of Cincinnati
Bachelor of Architecture
Contact
Curriculum Vitae
About
Stephanie Z. 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.
As Director of the Division of Architecture from 2016 to 2024, Pilat led a remarkable period of growth and innovation, more than doubling both student enrollment and faculty size while fostering a culture of excellence. She led a collaborative process to create a Strategic Plan for the division of architecture. She engaged faculty in research-informed discussions about architecture studio culture and stereotype threat, laying the groundwork for inclusive teaching practices. This research-informed approach to studio culture became the focus of “Inclusive Design Pedagogies and Practices,” a theme issue of the journal Enquiry, which Pilat co-edited with Dr. Angela Person and Dr. Carmina Sanchez. Pilat and Person also received the 2023 Course Development Prize from the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture and Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for “Resilient Futures: Re-Imagining Habitation in Energy Country.”
Recognizing the OU division of architecture faculty’s aspiration to exceed basic accreditation requirements, Pilat led the development of comprehensive Curricular Goals that reflected shared values and ambitions for the program. This collaborative approach resulted in the successful reaccreditation of both degree programs with full 8-year terms. She initiated several innovative programs to support faculty research and creative activity, including the Gibbs Research Fellowship and the Division of Architecture Publication Incentive Program.
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, has garnered significant national attention and 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.
Throughout her career, Pilat has consistently fostered environments where collaborative scholarship flourishes, leading to shared recognition and collective achievement in both research and pedagogy.
Selected Publications
Angela Person, Stephanie Pilat and Marco Piscitelli, editors, Outré West: The American School of Architecture from Oklahoma to California (Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, 2024).
Stephanie Pilat and Angela Person. “Radical Empathy in the Teaching of Bruce Goff and the American School of Architects” in Histories of Architecture Education in the United States, edited by Peter Laurence, (London: Routledge, 2023), 123-134.
Stephanie Pilat, Angela Person and Carmina Sanchez, editors, “Inclusive Design Pedagogies and Practices.” Special issue of Enquiry the ARCC Journal for Architectural Research, vol. 19, no. 1, Sept. 2022.
Stephanie Pilat and Angela Person, “Inclusive Design Studios.” Enquiry the ARCC Journal for Architectural Research, vol. 19, no. 1, Sept. 2022, 62-75.
Stephanie Pilat, Angela Person and Hans Butzer, “Do Not Try to Remember” in Radical Pedagogies, edited by Beatriz Colomina, Ignacio G. Galán, Evangelos Kotsioris, and Anna-Maria Meister, (MIT Press, 2022), 54-57.
Stephanie Pilat, “Measure What You Treasure: Elevating the Work of Architects in the Academy,” in “Built” a special issue of The Journal of Architectural Education, vol. 75, issue 1, 2021, 145-147.
Stephanie Pilat and Paolo Sanza, “Architectural Pragmatism and Poetry: Childhood in Fascist Era Summer Camps,” in Childhood in the Past, vol. 13.2, fall 2020.
Luca Guido, Stephanie Pilat, and Angela Person, editors. Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture (The University of Oklahoma Press, 2020). Renegades is a peer-reviewed scholarly book that accompanied the 2020 exhibition of the same name at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum. The book was awarded an honorable mention for the 2022 Society of Architectural Historians Exhibition Catalog Award. It won the 2021 Oklahoma Book Award for Design and Illustration. It was a finalist for the College Art Association 2021 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Exhibition Catalogs.
Kay Bea Jones and Stephanie Pilat, editors. The Routledge Guide to Italian Fascist Architecture: Reception and Legacy (Routledge, 2020).
Stephanie Pilat, “Slow Architecture: Production in Postwar Italian Housing,” Journal of Architectural Education, 71:01 (March, 2017): 95-99.
Stephanie Pilat, “Constructed out of Fear: The Influence of Tuberculosis on the Design of Children’s Summer Camps in Mussolini’s Italy” in Healing Spaces: Modern Architecture and the Body, edited by Sarah Schrank and Didem Ekici (Ashgate Press, 2016), 139-49.
Stephanie Pilat, “La Parola al Piccone: Demonstrations of Fascism at the Imperial Fora and the Mausoleum of Augustus” in The Political Landscapes of Capitals, edited by Jessica Christie and Jelena Bogdanović (University of Colorado Press, 2015), 319-46.
Stephanie Pilat, Reconstructing Italy: The Ina-Casa Neighborhoods of the Postwar Era (Ashgate Press, 2014), 276 pages. Reconstructing Italy is a comprehensive study of the Italian Ina-Casa plan, which built nearly 400,000 units of social housing after the second world war. An Italian translation of the book was published by Castelvecchi Editore in 2019. Research for the book was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship and a Rome Prize from the American Academy.