Alberto Pérez-Gómez
Alberto Pérez-Gómez (born 24 December 1949) is an eminent architectural historian. He is also well known as an theorist with an orientation rooted in a phenomenological approach to architecture.
Biography
Born December 24, 1949, in Mexico City he graduated as an engineer and architect from the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico. Afterwards he did postgraduate work at Cornell University. He then pursued graduate studies in the History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Essex where he received his Master of Arts in 1975 and Ph.D. in 1979. In 1987 he became a Canadian Citizen and a Quebec resident. In 1984, he won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award for his book Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science.[1] He has taught and lectured at various schools of architecture around the world and was director of the Carleton University School of Architecture from 1983 to 1986. Currently, he runs the History and Theory of Architecture program at the McGill University School of Architecture, where he is the Saidye Rosner Bronfman Professor in History and Theory of Architecture.
Dr. Pérez-Gómez is the author of numerous volumes of architectural scholarship. Polyphilo or The Dark Forest Revisited (MIT Press, 1992), an erotic narrative/theory of architecture that retells the love story of the famous fifteenth century novel/treatise Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in late twentieth-century terms, a text that has become the source of numerous projects and exhibitions (http://www.polyphilo.com). A Spanish version translated by the author was published as El Sueño de Polyfilo. El Origen Erótico del Significado Arquitectónico (Universidad Iberoamericana, 2012). He was co-editor of the well-known book series CHORA: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture vol. 1-7 (McGill-Queen's University Press) together with Stephen Parcell, which collects essays exploring fundamental questions concerning the practice of architecture through its history and theories. He co-authored a major book with Louise Pelletier, Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge (MIT Press, 1997), tracing the history and theory of modern European architectural representation, with special reference to the role of projection in architectural design. In Built Upon Love: Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics (MIT Press, 2006), Pérez-Gómez examines points of convergence between ethics and poetics in architectural history and philosophy, and draws important conclusions for contemporary practice. His most recent title, Attunement, Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science (MIT Press, 2016) calls for an architecture that can enhance our human values and capacities, an architecture that is connected—attuned—to its location and its inhabitants. Architecture, Pérez-Gómez explains, operates as a communicative setting for societies; its beauty and its meaning lie in its connection to human health and self-understanding.
Publications
- Attunement: Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science (2016) ISBN 0-262-52864-9
- Timely Meditations: Architectural Theories and Practices (Selected Essays on Architecture), vol.1 (2016) ISBN 1-533-00350-5
- Timely Meditations: Architectural Philosophy and Hermeneutics (Selected Essays on Architecture), vol.2 (2016) ISBN 1-534-69535-4
- Built upon Love: Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics (2006) ISBN 0-262-16238-5
- Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge with Louise Pelletier (2003) ISBN 0-262-16169-9
- Anamorphosis (1997) ISBN 0-7735-1450-3
- Polyphilo, or, The Dark Forest Revisited : an Erotic Epiphany of Architecture (1992) ISBN 0-262-66090-3
- Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (1983) ISBN 0-262-16091-9
- Lo Bello y lo Justo en Arquitectura (2015) ISBN 978-607-502-348-9
- Alberto Pérez-Gómez. De la Educación en Arquitectura (2014) ISBN 978-607-417-278-2
- El Sueño de Polyfilo. El Origen Erótico del Significado Arquitectónico (2012) ISBN 978-607-417-190-7
See also
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
- Marco Frascari
- Gregory Henriquez
- Joseph Rykwert
- Dalibor Vesely
- Nader El-Bizri
- David Leatherbarrow
- Robert Tavernor
- Lily Chi
- Marc J. Neveu
- Lisa Landrum
- Peter Olshavsky
- Jason Crow
- Architecture theory
- McGill University School of Architecture
- Stylianos Giamarelos (2015) Interdisciplinary Deflections: Histories of the Scientific Revolution in Alberto Pérez-Gómez's Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science. Journal of Architectural Education Vol. 69, Iss. 1, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10464883.2015.987069
References
- Giamarelos, S. (2015) Interdisciplinary Deflections: Histories of the Scientific Revolution in Alberto Pérez-Gómez's Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science. Journal of Architectural Education Vol. 69, Iss. 1, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10464883.2015.987069