THE CASS GILBERT ERA : 1910-1922 Cass Gilbert imagined a campus for UT that was grand and monumental. Even before actually receiving the commission, he produced ketches of a campus with powerful scale and clarity. His buildings conspired together to frame dominant vistas and define malls, courts, and plazas, creating memorable exterior spaces. In these images, the rural-feeling green lawns were…

Think Like an Architect is a refreshingly personal book. Though it clearly fulfills its intention to "communicate ways to give the necessary care to designing buildings that's needed to enhance the quality of life for the people who live with them as well as the environment around them," it is also a warm and intimate story of the life and career of its author. Through his own gimlet-eyed…

From 1910 to 1942 the University of Texas at Austin built an extraordinary ensemble of buildings which demonstrated palpably to its public the ambitions of an emerging institution. In a relatively short period of time, the image of the University was transformed from a sleepy, small-town college housed in a hodgepodge of mismatched buildings into a powerful, sophisticated institution whose campus…

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…

Two-and-a-half years ago I wrote a short piece for the first issue of TRIBEZA describing briefly the potentials, challenges and immediate outlook for architecture and urban design in Austin. Those were heady days in early 2001 when this City seemed ready to accomplish anything it set its mind to. Ambitious new museums, performing arts venues, civic ensembles and urban infrastructure improvements…

In the early years of the 21st century, it is easy to identify a handful of "stars" of the architectural world who have made their reputations substantially through the building of museums. Frank Gehry and Richard Meier in the United States, Herzog and de Meuron and Renzo Piano in Europe, and Yoshio Taniguchi and Tadeo Ando in Japan have all gained world renown significantly for their design of…

In a time when architects have become stars and their recognizable styles have become personal brands, it is refreshing to see a well-known and respected designer like Carlos Jimenez create a building that is informed more by its clients' needs and the context of its site than by a signature formal gesture. The private library and guest accommodation Jimenez has designed for Melba and Ted Whatley…

Mack Scogin describes his firm's recent dormitory at Tulane University as a project that needed "to come from within itself"-one wherein the designers made no attempt to "bring in external issues" or "burden the design with concerns that might be 'hot' in architecture currently." Their goal was to draw on a difficult site, a tightly defined program, a venerable institution, and a colorful locale…

During his thirteen-year tenure as campus architect, from 1909 to 1922, Cass Gilbert made a seminal contribution to the University of Texas that would have a profound and far-reaching impact on the development of that institution. From his very earliest sketches, Gilbert portrayed an image of the university that was far more ambitious and sophisticated than had been imagined previously. In his…