Larry Speck

Architecture, at its best, embodies a society's consciousness about itself. More perhaps than the product of any other discipline - any of the arts, science, or technology-the artifacts which result from the act of building bespeak the character and aspirations of their makers. Architecture is our most timeless and quotidian means of expressing ourselves – of transf...

In the late 1960s, Paul Rudolph, who was, at the time, one of the most respected American architects of his generation and who was dean of the School of Architecture at Yale University, wrote the following: "In architecture all problems can never be solved... Indeed it is a characteristic of the 20th century that architects are highly selective in determining which problems they want to solve."…

In her landmark book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, Jane Jacobs draws battle lines between two radically divergent visions of American urbanism. She decries "modern orthodox city planning" which had emerged in response to the advocacy of diverse figures like Ebenezer Howard, Sir Patrick Geddes, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and others. Their vision of a…

In the spring of 2003 I was invited to co-teach an interdisciplinary course on "beauty" in the honors liberal arts program at University of Texas at Austin. Because I view architecture very much as an interdisciplinary field - part art, part engineering, part business, part philosophy, part sociology, part political policy, etc. - I treasure such opportunities to delve deeply into issues relevant…