Tatiana Berger has a B.A. in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master's Degree from Princeton University, where she studied under Alan Colquhoun. Ms.Berger is a Russian-born architect and educator, with over 15 years of international practice experience. She has collaborated with several well-known architectural firms, practicing in Portugal, Russia, Austria, and the US from 1995 until 2007. For seven of those years, she worked closely with Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza to design and build multiple projects in Iberia. She oversaw the reconstruction of the historic Chiado district in Lisbon, designed additions to Siza's Social Housing in Evora, and was responsible for several major public and private projects in the office from 1997-2004, including the new library in Viana do Castelo, the Nadir Afonso Art Foundation, and a school of design in Pasadena, a collaboration with Frank Gehry. Ms.Berger worked with Richard Meier in New York and with Baumschlager Eberle in Lochau, Austria. She completed residential projects in Austria and Switzerland, winning several international competitions while freelancing with the firm between 2004-2006. During this time she also worked on urban and landscape design, developing schemes for multi-use megaform structures over the Moscow railways and a study for sustainable housing outside Beijing, China. In Russia, she was hired by Austrian engineering firm ILF to manage the 2014 Winter Olympics project, which went on to win in 2007. Her extensive work in design and construction has been inter-disciplinary and developed at multiple scales, with equal attention given to urban environments, landscapes, buildings, and furniture.
Ms.Berger is a full time faculty member at NewSchool of Architecture and Design in San Diego, California, where she teaches courses in Architectural and Urban Theory, Graduate Design Studio, Graduate Thesis Research, and Neuroscience and Architecture. She has also taught at the Boston Architectural College (2007-2013), at Wentworth Institute of Technology and at Roger Williams University. Since 2007, at the BAC, she has taught advanced design studio and options studio, a graduate history/theory seminar on Iberian architecture, construction, materials and methods, professional practice, and drawing. She has extensive experience in the advanced/option studios and the graduate thesis sequence, having taught several thesis studios and acted as a primary adviser for award-winning thesis projects in two different schools. She has been a visiting critic at several institutions in Europe and the US, including the ETH in Zurich, the Porto School of Architecture, the Moscow Architectural Institute, City College of New York, Princeton University, and the GSD at Harvard University. In 2010 Ms. Berger co-founded the Compostela Institute with Professor Carlos Seoane.