AA boss heads across Atlantic for role at UCLA

Architectural Association director Brett Steele is leaving the school to take up the post of dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture in the US.

Steele, who has been in charge of the AA since 2005, will take up his new role in Los Angeles next August and replaces David Roussève, who has been interim dean since last July.

Prior to his time at the AA, Steele was a project architect at Zaha Hadid Architects and a project architect and planner in New York.

He said: “I am honoured and excited to be appointed dean and to join the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. I look forward to working with everyone across all four of the brilliant departments in the school.”

In its latest set of accounts, Steele oversaw a 10% hike in revenue with the AA raking in £16.6 million in the year to July 2015.

In those accounts, which were published earlier this year and showed that the highest paid staffer picked up between £170,000 and £180,000, the AA said it had reappointed Steele for a further five years with that fixed-term contract beginning last August.

Steele’s time at the AA was hit by a complicated accounting scam which at its height in 2012 the AA said could end up costing it £5.5 million.

But the dispute was settled three years ago and Steele said its liabilities and costs ended up being “significantly below £1 million”.

A naturalised British citizen, Steele grew up in Oregon and Idaho. He received his diploma in architecture from the AA and studied at the University of Oregon, the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, and the San Francisco Center for Architecture and Urban Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute.