RIBA announces 2015 Honorary Fellowships

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) today (Wednesday 24 September) announced the 2015 RIBA Honorary Fellowships which will be awarded to thirteen individuals from a diverse spectrum of backgrounds, including the worlds of engineering, media, education and the arts.

RIBA Honorary Fellowships are awarded annually to people who have made a particular contribution to architecture in its broadest sense. This includes its promotion, administration and outreach; and its role in building more sustainable communities and in the education of future generations.

The 2015 RIBA Honorary Fellowships will be awarded to:

Professor Peter Carl, academic, London Metropolitan University

Marilyn Dyer, Architectural Association Registrar

Gerald Hines, Founder and Chairman of HINES

Niall Hobhouse, client and curator

Kurt W Forster, architectural historian

Ola Kolehmainen, artist

Ian Latham, publisher and writer

Frosso Pimenides, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London

Vicky Richardson, Director of Architecture, British Council

Peter Sweasey, television producer

Mark Swenarton, architectural historian and critic

Neil Thomas, structural engineer

Dalibor Vesely, academic

The lifetime honour allows recipients to use the initials Hon FRIBA after their name.

The 2015 RIBA Honorary Fellowships will be awarded at a special event at the RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London, W1 on 3 February 2015.

ENDS

Notes to editors

For further press information contact Howard Crosskey in the RIBA Press Office: 020 7307 3761 howard.crosskey@riba.org

Honorary Fellowships are awarded by the RIBA each year to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the quality of architecture, the achievements of the profession and the aims and objectives of the RIBA. Any person who is not an architect may be nominated by RIBA members and elected as an Honorary Fellow.

The 2014 RIBA Honours Committee who selected the 2015 fellows was chaired by RIBA President Stephen Hodder with Joseph Rykwert, Benedetta Tagliabue, Eric Parry and Louisa Hutton.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) champions better buildings, communities and the environment through architecture and our members. Visit www.architecture.com and follow us on Twitter.

RIBA Honorary Fellows 2015 citations:

Prof Peter Carl, Head of PhD Programme, London Metropolitan University

Peter Carl is one of the most influential teachers of architecture at work today. He studied architecture at Princeton, receiving his M Arch in 1973. As a Prix de Rome scholar he spent two years studying the architectural history of Rome from its origins to the creation of the new town of EUR. He then taught at the University of Kentucky until 1979. Under the Deanship of Anthony Eardley his primary subject was the origins of architecture, and among his teaching colleagues was Daniel Libeskind. During that time he took part in the Roma Interrotta, a re-imagining of the 18th century plan of city of Rome, with Colin Rowe.

In 1979 he moved to the University of Cambridge, teaching design and the graduate programme in History and Philosophy of Architecture with Dalibor Vesely, Joseph Rykwert and Wendy Pullan. He also ran studios with the likes of David Leatherbarrow, Mohsen Mostafavi and Eric Parry, exploring the issues of orientation in London and other European cities. His work at Cambridge deepened our understanding of cities from their origins to the present day.

After 20 years, Peter became director of the PhD programme in the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design, London Metropolitan University. His PhD course combines concrete design issues with their cultural significance.

Peter has always placed architecture in a wider cultural context. At Princeton his research into the nature of architectural meaning, supervised by Michael Graves led to an unpublished paper, Thematic Organisation, and he is currently working with Frederick Phillipson on a book on Practical Wisdom and Joyce’s Dublin. And during a sabbatical from Cambridge he spent time researching Plato, Aristotle, and Judeo-Christian primary texts. But time and again his thinking, his writing and his teaching have returned to Le Corbusier – for him one of the last architects to care about the traditional inheritance of architecture and to re-think it creatively.

Marilyn Dyer – Registrar AA

Marilyn commenced her employment at the Architectural Association in 1970 as a co-ordinator for the Centre of Advanced Studies in Environment (providing short courses for professionals), at the time when the AA was proposing an amalgamation with Imperial College. From 1971 she worked under the leadership of the incoming Chairman of the AA, Alvin Boyarsky.

Over a period of four decades Marilyn has worked with four different Chairmen: Alvin Boyarsky, Alan Balfour, Mohsen Mostafavi and Brett Steele. In that time she has been responsible for the administration and co-ordination of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Environment, Professional Practice, the School’s Facilities, its Graduate School, the Undergraduate School, Admissions and Accounts. She has also acted as its Assistant Registrar and for the last 14 years its Registrar.

It is true to say that the AA is always evolving and over the last few decades the AA has increased its Graduate Programmes which are validated by the Open University for the awarding of degrees. The Undergraduate Programme has continued its validation of the five year undergraduate programme through the RIBA and ARB prescription. The School is now academically recognised by the Quality Assurance Agency. The Immigration status for international students has been a major challenge for the AA but to date the School holds a Highly Trusted Sponsor Status and received a clean bill of health by the Immigration officials that visited the School, unannounced, in October 2013. This is a vastly challenging and changing scene from the one which greeted Marilyn Dyer when she first entered the door of 36 Bedford Square. And none of this would have been possible without her expertise, clear thinking and humour.

Kurt W Forster – architectural historian

Kurt W Forster is an historian, critic, writer and teacher. He is a Swiss citizen who studied at universities in Switzerland, Germany, England and Italy, graduating in history of art and architecture, literature and archaeology at the University of Zurich. Following his studies Kurt left immediately for the USA, where he has taught at the universities of Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard and MIT.

In 1984 Kurt founded and was the first director of the Getty Institution of Research in Los Angeles, where he guided the formation of a vast library of archives, publications, texts and documents, and organized a worldwide collaborative network of scholars – so that in just 9 years this institution became America’s most important research centre for arts and culture.

Kurt directed the 9th Architectural Biennale in Venice in 2004 whose theme was metamorphosis, and authored the accompanying 3-volume catalogue. The exhibition featured the most important current projects of established architects such as Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry as well as that of younger, emerging architects.

Between 2003 and 2005 Kurt was Professor of Architecture at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Since then he has been a Professor and the Director of Doctoral Studies at Yale School of Architecture, where he inspires a small number of advanced students investigating themes in 19th and 20th century art and architecture.

Kurt has written and published extensively throughout his career, focusing his attention on Giulio Romano, Palladio, Schinkel, Scarpa, Mollino, Rossi, Gehry, Eisenmann and others. Kurt was the joint author with Francesco Dal Co Hon FRIBA of the first ever book on Gehry, and he also contributed to Wilkinson Eyre’s 2007 monograph Exploring Boundaries. Kurt made the first edition of Aby Warburg’s writings available in English in 1999, and is currently completing a book on Warburg’s Kulturwissenschaft.

This whistle-stop tour of Kurt’s vita – while listing some of his achievements and therefore hopefully hinting at his ever-expanding encyclopaedic knowledge – fails to convey the wonderful agility with which Kurt creates surprising alliances and connections that can be enjoyed in his writings or even better in conversation over dinner. It is for Kurt’s brilliance and his generosity with ideas that have been nourishing the worlds of Art History and Architectural History and Theory for many decades that he is being awarded an RIBA Honorary Fellowship.

Gerald D Hines – real estate investor

Gerald D Hines leads an international real estate company with developments throughout the US and 16 other countries, with a fast growing portfolio in the UK. He was born in 1925 in Gary, Indiana and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.

He moved to Houston in 1948 to form an engineering partnership and started a fledgling real estate business on the side. He formed Gerald D Hines Interests in 1957. Early Hines projects were warehouses and small office buildings. His first large-scale commercial development came in 1967 when Shell Oil Company hired Hines to construct a new headquarters in Houston. Today, the Hines portfolio of projects underway, completed, acquired and managed for third parties includes more than 1,100 properties representing over 42 million square metres of office, residential, mixed-use, industrial, hotel, medical, retail and sports facilities, as well as large, master-planned communities and land developments, with assets valued at approximately $25.8 billion.

Many of his buildings were designed by well-known architects: I. M. Pei, Cesar Pelli, Frank Gehry, Robert A M Stern and Herzog & de Meuron (Diagonal Mar in Barcelona, 34-hectare site near Olympic Village), and Philip Johnson (the “Lipstick” office building at 885 Third Avenue), who also designed major skyscrapers for him in many American cities.

In the UK Hines owns the mixed-use Brindleyplace Birmingham, originally developed by Argent: the mixed-use development that features the RIBA award-winning Ikon Gallery. In London, it owns in a joint venture with HSBC the two phases of the currently being re-developed Broadgate West development, originally designed by Gensler and by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. With Network Rail Hines is also re-developing Cannon Place and the Cannon Street mainline and underground stations. In 2013 it also acquired One Westferry Circus, Canary Wharf designed by SOM.

In his late 80s Hines is still skis and cycles and remains an enthusiast for architecture: “This is the one profession where you can see a physical exemplification of your work. It’s a real turn-on.”

Niall Hobhouse – critic, collector and client

Over the last fifteen years Niall Hobhouse has been an active force in architecture and urbanism. He is important as a collector and private patron. His collection of architectural drawings and models – one of the most important in the world – currently includes some 3000 items, AD 1500-2000, of European and American origin. As a patron Niall has commissioned a number of buildings in London and on his Somerset estate, by the Smithsons, Florian Beigel, Cedric Price, Stephen Taylor, Skene Catling (RIBA Award winner for Dairy Cottage,) and most recently Hugh Strange whose Architecture Archive won an RIBA National Award in 2014.

He is an occasional architectural advisor to cultural institutions on building commissions and competitions, most recently The Landmark Trust for the 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize-winning Astley Castle and the Courtauld Institute of Art for a new exhibition space for works on paper.

In the last few years, he also published a number of articles in the Architectural Review, Building Design and the Economist.

Niall is a Trustee of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal He is a member of the Architecture Committee of the Royal Academy of Arts. He has served as a Trustee and Chairman of the Design and Development Committee of the Holburne Museum in Bath. He has been a Trustee of the Development Trust of the National Museums of Liverpool. Niall has also served as a Trustee of the Campaign for Museums, a Governor of the LSE, and a member of the Advisory Board for its Cities Programme. He is a Life Trustee of Sir John Soane’s Museum in; and he has sat on the Development and Programming Committee Garden Museum, Lambeth.

He lectures and writes on architectural and curatorial issues for V&A, Architectural Association; and Architectural Review, the Economist, Building Design, Oase, Log, AA Files.

Niall is unique in having contributed to the architectural scene as a critic and historian, as an administrator, as a very independent but also very thoughtful patron and collector. The variety of his contribution in no way obscures its importance.

Ola Kolehmainen – Finland – artist

Ola Kolehmainen is an artist who works exclusively with the photographic medium. Born in Finland in 1964 and educated at the University of Industrial Design there, Kolehmainen relocated to Berlin in 1994 where he is currently based.

Kolehmainen is one of the most recognized Finnish photographers. Since 1995 his work has been shown in numerous individual monographic and group exhibitions worldwide, and is included in many highly regarded collections throughout Europe.

Kolehmainen has become known for his minimalistic and abstract close-ups that he exhibits as large format works. These depict the details, surfaces and patterns of modern and contemporary architecture. In particular, these large format works force the viewer to experience a profoundly corporeal relationship with both image and space. In addition Kolehmainen has for a long time been interested in reflections both on the surfaces of his built subjects and on the surfaces of his actual art works: that is, in the way in which these latter reflect the environments – often including the viewer – of their own installations.

Inspired by Modernists such as Mies van der Rohe and Alvar Aalto, Kolehmainen makes us look again at the way we perceive architecture. Having dedicated his eye to works by Mansilla Tunõn, Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, Future Systems, Glenn Murcutt, more recently Kolehmainen has projected his interest in Modernism back into the past. He spent many months in Istanbul researching the work of the famous 16C architect Sinan as well as making wonderful studies of the Hagia Sophia. In the artist’s attraction to repetition and order through structuring, Kolehmainen’s particular – and judgmental – eye is also often attracted to those anonymous buildings that make up the majority of our cities. Through his naked exposures and interpretations of the surfaces of these structures, we are confronted with the reality of our everyday life through poetic means and led to question – and reconstruct for ourselves – our own environment.

Kolehmainen’s particular and passionate contribution to our way of seeing architecture, both through his involvement with particular buildings and with the mass of structures that form our urban environment, means he is well worthy of an RIBA Honorary Fellowship.

Ian Latham – publisher and writer

Ian Latham is the Publishing Editor of Architecture Today, the leading independent architectural publishing house in the UK. The company, in which most shareholders are architects, specialises in producing high-quality publications for the architectural community, including the influential monthly magazine Architecture Today.

Ian has been at the heart of the British architectural scene for 35 years, both as a writer and editor. While studying architecture at Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University), and after working for his ‘year out’ with Peter Moro, he joined Architectural Design magazine as Technical Editor, overseeing a series of influential issues with guest editors including Kenneth Frampton, Demetri Porphyrios, Derek Walker and Charles Jencks. He moved to Building Design magazine as Deputy Editor and Features Editor in 1983, where with Paul Finch he helped promote a young generation of architects and writers, before conceiving and launching Architecture Today magazine with Mark Swenarton in 1989. Since then AT has become firmly established as a key publication, not least for its consistent focus on the best new buildings and for its authoritative writing.

In addition, Ian runs the specialist architectural book publisher Right Angle Publishing, also initially established with Mark Swenarton. He has edited and designed a series of major books on leading architectural practices, including Dixon Jones: Buildings and Projects, Feilden Clegg Bradley: the Environmental Handbook, van Heyningen & Haward, Allies & Morrison and, with the late Sir Richard MacCormac, a comprehensive volume on MacCormac Jamieson Prichard – Building Ideas. The Dixon Jones monograph was described by Richard Weston in the Architect’s Journal as “a beautifully crafted example of how to present architecture in print; its presentation is exemplary”.

Ian’s first book, on the turn-of-the-century Viennese architect Joseph Maria Olbrich, began life as his graduate thesis and was published while he was studying for his diploma in architecture – external examiner Geoffrey Broadbent was ‘duly impressed’. Since then, he has lectured and acted as a visiting critic at many schools of architecture, and has participated in symposia, conferences, and national media. He has helped curate exhibitions on Jozé Plecnik, Wells Coates, Quinlan Terry, Robert Stern and Erich Mendelsohn, and (with Archigram’s Dennis Crompton) a major showcase of British Architecture at the RIBA in 1980. He was a founding trustee of the 9H Gallery (precursor to the Architecture Foundation), led the assessment panels for RIBA student dissertation prizes for ten years, and served on the RIBA jury for the Royal Gold Medal in 2000 and 2001.

Frosso Pimenides – academic – Bartlett

Frosso Pimenides has been an essential part of the lifeblood of the Bartlett School of Architecture for over twenty years, running the First Year course during that entire period. From the time she set up the new course her main challenge was deciding on an agenda for initiating young people into education in architecture and the determining the skills and facilities that would be required. Every student who has gone through the Bartlett undergraduate course has felt her enthusiasm and influence, and has benefitted greatly. Cerebral, warm-hearted, intelligent, fun, and never afraid to voice her opinion, Frosso is a natural-born academic who through her efforts in opening the minds of so many young students, and above all making them hungry to immerse themselves in the subject of architecture, has enriched the profession immeasurably.

Frosso is renowned throughout the Bartlett for the quality of her drawing – jaws have been known to drop at her sketches and a generation of architects has emerged from the school re-convinced of the power of the architectural drawing. She is currently the Sir Bannister Fletcher Lecturer in Architecture, BSc Year 1 Director at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

In 2012 Frosso was rewarded for her outstanding contribution to teaching in the UCL Provost’s Teaching Awards. On accepting that award she said, ‘Architecture education is unique in the sense that it is the antithesis of secondary education. We provide a radical shift for students who come to UCL with a fear of failure, discouragement from asking questions and a reluctance to take risks and be playful with their design work. To motivate us as educators I feel it is important we explore and experiment alongside the student. They are shocked when we tell them we can’t provide the answers to the problems we set but through this conversation teaching and learning can run in parallel.’

For her 24 years of dedication to education with the important task of inspiring and educating young people at the start of their future careers as architects, and for such excellence in the results, Frosso Pimenides is being rewarded with an Honorary RIBA Fellowship.

Vicky Richardson – Director Architecture, Design, Fashion, The British Council

Vicky took up her post of Director Architecture, Design, Fashion at The British Council on the 1st March 2010, continuing the work of Catherine Ince and Alison Moloney, who were Acting Co-Directors of the team following Emily Campbell’s departure in October 2008.

Vicky’s role at the British Council includes overseeing projects in London and around the world. She is responsible for commissioning the British Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2014 Vicky worked with FAT Architecture and Crimson Architectural Historians on an exhibition entitled A Clockwork Jerusalem which explores how the modern future of Britain was built from an unlikely combination of interests and shows how these projects have changed our physical and imaginative landscapes.

Vicky is also a Co-Director of the London Festival of Architecture and a member of the London Mayor’s Cultural Strategy Group, which advises on the capital’s culture policy. She has been a member of various design juries including the RIBA Awards, the D&AD Awards and the Architect of the Year Awards.

She is a visiting critic at a number of design and architecture schools and writes about the subjects for a variety of publications, as well as writing the British Council design blog, Back of the Envelope. Richardson’s books include New Vernacular Architecture (Laurence King, 2002) and In Defence of the Dome (ASI, 1999). Richardson is currently studying for her MA in Early Modern History at King’s College London. In 2014 she was nominated as one of Debrett’s 500, as one of 20 most influential people in British architecture.

She was Deputy Editor at the RIBA Journal before becoming Editor of Blueprint, the design and architecture magazine founded by Peter Murray and first edited by Deyan Sudjic, which she edited between March 2004 and February 2010.

Vicky gained a BA in Architecture from the University of Westminster having previously taken a BA Fine Art (Painting) at Chelsea School of Art, having done her Foundation in Art and Design at the Central School of Art and Design.

Peter Sweasey – TV producer

Peter Sweasey created and directed the recent BBC Four series The Brits Who Built The Modern World. Made as a partnership between the RIBA and BBC, the three hour-long films told the story of how a single generation of British talent helped transform architecture into one of Britain’s most strongest cultural exports. In exclusive interviews, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw, Terry Farrell, and Michael and Patty Hopkins revealed how the experience of growing up in post-war Britain led them to create the architectural approach dubbed “high tech”, and how the practices they founded grew into global players. The series explored the creation of key projects in depth, by talking to collaborators, engineers and clients, giving the general public a rare insight into the process of making buildings. The series was complemented by three linked RIBA exhibitions telling the story of British architecture abroad, which brought record numbers of visitors to 66 Portland Place. A fruitful working relationship also developed between the RIBA and the series’ co-producers at the Open University.

Peter worked for three years on Channel 4’s coverage of the RIBA Stirling Prize, directing and producing the highly respected films on the work of each year’s Stirling-shortlisted architects. As well as featuring in the live programme fronted by Kevin McCloud, Peter’s films were played to the live audiences of up to 800 architects and their guests who watched them with rapt attention – which says much about the quality of the film-making.

Earlier in his TV career Peter worked on the influential series One Foot in the Past which made its first BBC2 appearance in 1992. The series, which had a series of guest presenters, demonstrated how the present is influenced by the past. In each episode, a different historical site was visited, its cultural history and its remaining artefacts and architecture lovingly detailed. The on-going efforts to preserve the sites were shown in detail. It was one of the first popular TV programmes to take architecture seriously and did it without any dumbing-down whatsoever. Peter’s passion for bringing architecture to new audiences later saw him work on two series of Dreamspaces, a glossy architectural magazine shown on BBC Three and BBC World; as well as an eight part series for Channel Five, Buildings that Shaped Britain; and BBC Four’s Ice Dream, which sent him to the Arctic Circle to film works created by Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando and Future Systems from snow and ice

Mark Swenarton – architectural historian and critic

Mark has dual interests as an historian and a critic of architecture and his career has spanned both academia and architectural publishing. Mark is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing & Commerce (RSA).

Mark trained originally as an architectural historian, working on his PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture under Reyner Banham and succeeding him in 1977 as a teacher when Banham moved to the USA. Mark alongside Adrian Forty and together in 1981 they set up the first masters’ course in architectural history in the UK. In addition in 1985 Mark was founding editor of the international journal Construction History.

In 1989, Mark set up an independent architectural publishing house to co-found with Ian Latham, the monthly review Architecture Today. The company, in which most of shareholders are architects, specialises in producing high-quality publications for the architectural community. Architecture Today is available free-of-charge to architects via controlled circulation subscriptions. In 2000 they also launched EcoTech.

In 2005 Mark moved from publishing to take up the chair of architecture and headship of the School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University. In 2010 he was appointed the first James Stirling Chair of Architecture at the Liverpool School of Architecture.

As a critic since 2005 Mark has continued to write for Architecture Today, as well as for the Architectural Review, AA Files, and RIBA Journal. He has also served as chair of design review at CABE/Design Council CABE since 2010, in 2014 he was appointed to the new Oxford Design Review Panel and in 2013 he was a judge in the RIBA Awards.

Mark’s historical publications include: Homes fit for heroes: the politics and architecture of early state housing in Britain (1981); Artisans and architects: the Ruskinian tradition in architectural thought (1989); and Building the New Jerusalem: Architecture, Politics and Housing 1900-1930 (2008). He was also co-editor with Igea Troiani and Helena Webster of The Politics of Making (2008). With Ian Latham Mark edited Brindleyplace: a model for urban regeneration (1999); Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones: buildings and projects 1959-2002 (2002); Feilden Clegg Bradley: the Environmental Handbook (2007) and Architecture and the Welfare State, co-edited with Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel (2014).

Since 2008 Mark has been researching the high-density low-rise housing by Neave Brown, Peter Tábori, Gordon Benson and Alan Forsyth for Camden between 1965 and 73. He has organized exhibitions on the subject at the Building Centre in 2010, at Holborn Local History Centre and the Alexandra Road community centre in 2011. Outputs from the research so far have been published in the Journal of Architecture, Town Planning Review and Planning Perspectives. The complete monograph is due to be published by Ashgate in 2017.

Neil Thomas – structural engineer

Neil Thomas set up his own firm, Atelier One in 1989, after working with, and being influenced by, first Buro Happold, and subsequently Anthony Hunt. Architects appreciate working with his firm because its engineers are always open to new ideas and are prepared to be experimental. That lead comes from Neil himself.

Neil has always enjoyed working on diverse projects, including the stage sets designed by Mark Fisher for Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, U2 and Take That; the House project by artist Rachel Whiteread – a cast of the last remaining Victorian house in a demolished terrace – which, although it was only in existence for a few months, has been hailed as one of the greatest pieces of British sculpture; and Cloud Gate, a public sculpture by Anish Kapoor that is the centerpiece of AT&T Plaza at Millennium Park in Chicago.

More conventional architectural projects have included the roof of Singapore Art Centre by Michael Wilford; the Cardiff Visitor Centre by Will Alsop; the development of Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia by Lab Architecture Studio; Baltic the Gallery by Ellis Williams in Gateshead; three different buildings for White Cube in London; and the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, by Wilkinson Eyre that was the ‘World Building of the Year 2012′ at the World Architecture Festival and won the RIBA Lubetkin Prize.

For a quarter of a century one of the core aims of the practice has been to achieve sustainability in construction. In order do this various teams have conducted research into materials, systems and construction methods that cut energy consumption and reduce emissions. Also Atelier One always look for the most efficient structural solutions that require the fewest resources. As part of a wider design team they embrace all new technologies, carefully integrating them where appropriate to produce more environmentally responsible schemes.

Neil Thomas is being awarded an RIBA Honorary Fellowship for both the excellence and the inventiveness of his contribution to Architecture over the past 25 years.

Dalibor Vesely – academic

Dalibor Vesely was born in Prague in 1934 and studied engineering, architecture, and later art history and philosophy in Prague, Munich and Paris. He gained his PhD from Charles University, Prague where he was taught by the architects Havlicek, Honzik and Fragner and the philosopher Jan Patočka.

Vesely has been influential mostly through his writing and teaching in establishing the role of hermeneutics and phenomenology in the discourse of architecture. He has taught some of the current leading architects and architectural historians, such as Daniel Libeskind, Alberto

Pérez-Gómez, Robin Evans, Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow. He has taught at the University of Essex, at the Architectural Association in London and since 1978 at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture, where he also started an M Phil programme in History and Philosophy of Architecture with Joseph Rykwert and later with Peter Carl. Vesely taught Architectural History and Philosophy also at the University of Pennsylvania, and was a Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Manchester and Leicester Schools of Architecture.

In 2005 he was recipient of the CICA Bruno Zevi Book Award granted by the International Committee of Architectural Critics. In 2006 the Royal Institute of British Architects honoured Dalibor Vesely with the Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Architectural Education. In Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation (2004), Vesely set out his argument on the basis of his experience of architecture, as it constantly works through different modes of representation, including “built reality”. He defines the present cultural situation as divided and ambiguous, especially when it comes to architecture. Twentieth-century architecture, he says, placed its trust in the epistemological model of modern science and gap between different technology that is today most explicitly reflected in the instrumental concepts of city and suburban landscape. Today, the attempt to rehabilitate the primary tradition of architecture is dogged by the problem of bridging the modes of representation and concepts of knowledge that in some cases precede modern science, ie, precede, transform and extend the horizon of scientific knowledge as it takes course from the sixteenth –and seventeenth centuries.

Posted on Wednesday 24th September 2014

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