Renowned Architects to Hold Endowed Chairs at Yale

Four distinguished architects will hold endowed visiting professorships of design at Yale University’s School of Architecture this spring.

They are Greg Lynn, Andres Duany, Leon Krier and Glenn Murcutt.

Lynn will be the Davenport Professor, Duany and Krier will jointly hold the Saarinen Professorship and Murcutt will be the Bishop Professor. Please see the accompanying fact sheet for information about these endowed chairs.

Each visiting professor will teach a studio course at the School of Architecture and present a public lecture. Lectures are held in Hastings Hall, Art and Architecture Building, 180 York St., at 6:30 p.m. Duany will deliver the first lecture of the series on January 8. His topic will be “A General Theory of Urbanism.”

Greg Lynn
At the forefront of the rising generation of architects, Lynn was the William B. and Charlotte Shepherd Davenport Visiting Professor at Yale last spring and will hold that chair during the coming semester. He is known for his inventive use of the computer as an expressive medium, and he has taught throughout the United States and Europe. He is on the faculty at UCLA and Columbia as well as at the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich. His office, Greg Lynn FORM, in Venice, California, is currently working in collaboration with a variety of architects on projects that include designs for a new complex for the Cincinnati Country Day School, an energy efficient model house for the OMV Corporation in Austria, and networks of outdoor museums dedicated to contemporary art and the environment in Costa Rica and Spain.

Lynn’s first built project, designed in partnership with Michael McInturf and Yale Architecture School alumnus Douglas Garofalo, is the recently completed Korean Presbyterian Church of New York-adjudged one of the 1990’s most innovative buildings. In partnership with Eisenman Architects, Lynn is preparing a master plan for Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Author of two books, “Animate FORM” and “Folds, Bodies and Blobs: Collected Essays,” Lynn has published articles in many periodicals and co-edited and designed “Fetish” with Yale Architecture School critic Edward Mitchell and Yale College alumna Sarah Whiting. Lynn’s work has been widely exhibited throughout Western Europe as well as in Japan and Turkey.

Lynn earned his Bachelor of Philosophy and Bachelor of Environmental Design degrees from Miami University of Ohio and his M.Arch. from Princeton.

Andres Duany
Duany will be the Eero Saarinen Professor at the School of Architecture during the spring semester.

Duany has held faculty positions at the University of Miami, the University of Houston, the University of Virginia and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, among others. With his wife and partner Elizabeth Plater Zyberk, he held the Bishop Chair at Yale in 1987.

A founding partner of Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company, architects and town planners, with offices in Miami, Florida, Washington, D.C., and Charlotte, North Carolina, he and Plater-Zyberk are best known for remaking the traditional town as a viable alternative to suburban sprawl. Their firm has designed more than 200 new neighborhood and community revitalization plans, most notably Seaside, Florida, and Kentlands, Maryland.

Duany’s firm has designed houses, multi-family residences, civic buildings and commercial structures. Their built projects include Charleston Place, Cleveland’s Central Commons Neighborhood, Florida City Town Hall, and the Department of Planning and Zoning office in Miami’s Little Havana.

Duany is author of “Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream,” (2000) co-authored with Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck. Founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Duany and Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of a movement to reconsider how towns and cities are planned and developed. In “Suburban Nation” they assess what sprawl has cost society, in terms of ecology, economics, aesthetics and community.

Duany, a refugee from Castro’s Cuba, earned his B.A. degree from Princeton and M.Arch. from Yale in 1974.

Leon Krier
Born in Luxembourg in 1946, Krier lives in London and has taught at the Royal College of London and the Architectural Association. He held the Davenport Chair at Yale jointly with Demetri Porphyrios in 1991, and will hold the Eero Saarinen Professorship with Duany this spring.

Like Duany, Krier is committed to the importance of design in creating community. The ideal built environment, to Krier, is the small-scale town or traditional city where people work within walking distance of their homes. In 1986, he proposed dividing Washington, D.C. into such a place, creating four independent towns, each no larger than Georgetown, which would be one of the four. In his vision, the Tidal Basin would be enlarged and a canal would stretch from the Washington Monument to a “Constitution Square”public park cut into Capitol Hill.

In the 1980s, Krier served as a consultant for the master planning of Seaside, Florida. In 1988, he became an adviser to England’s Prince Charles, who commissioned him to design four new towns in England.

Among Krier’s books are “Architecture, Choice or Fate (1996); Albert Speer: Architecture 1932-1942 (1985), with Lars Olof Larsson; and “The Reconstruction of the European City” (1978).

Glenn Murcutt
Murcutt, considered Australia’s most distinguished architect today, will be the William Henry Bishop Professor at Yale this spring. Born in England in 1936, Murcutt grew up in Australia, earning his Diploma of Architecture from the Sydney Technical College in 1961. He has studied and traveled widely around the world, lecturing at universities and institutes from New Guinea, to Mexico City, Milan, Jerusalem and New York. He has served as visiting professor and visiting critic at several universities in Australia, as well as in Finland, Denmark and the United States. In the U.S., he has taught at the University of Virginia, UCLA, Montana State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. This will be Murcutt’s first visit to Yale.

Articles by Murcutt have appeared in many international architectural journals and his work has been included in numerous exhibitions. He is author of “Leaves of Iron,” 1985, with Philip Drew, and is the subject of several books, most recently one written in 1999 by Flora Giardiello Postiglione.

Among Murcutt’s many built projects are private residences and public buildings.

Architecture has been taught at Yale University since the late nineteenth century, initially as a course within the Yale School of Fine Arts, which was founded in 1869. The School of Architecture today offers a three-year program leading to the degree of Master of Architecture and a two-year post-professional program. In addition, the School offers a two-year program for advanced, independent research leading to the degree of Master of Environmental Design. Since 1963, the School has been located in a landmark building designed by Paul Rudolph at 180 York Street in New Haven, Conn.