East/West

Kelly Beamon -- Interior Design, 11/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

The University of Southern California's new dean of architecture, replacing the late Robert Timme, is Qingyun Ma. As principal of Shanghai-based MADA S.P.A.M., he's been central in the development of historic Qingpu. Combine that with his University of Pennsylvania master's in architecture, and you're looking at a curriculum that promises to be hemmed in neither by specialty nor by geography. "That's not to say that future architects will become generalists, but they should be navigators of boundaries," explains Ma, who starts his new bi-continental life January 1.