112 W. Center St., Suite 700
Fayetteville, AR 72701
Phone (479) 575-4945
Fax (479) 575-7429
112 W. Center St., Suite 700
Fayetteville, AR 72701
Phone (479) 575-4945
Fax (479) 575-7429
Douglas Darden, The Oxygen House, courtesy Peter Schneider.
Work by visionary architect and teacher Douglas Darden will be the subject of a lecture, “Working:Drawing,” by Peter Schneider, a professor of architecture and Chancellor’s Scholar at the University of Colorado, Denver. Darden is best known for a series of meticulously documented allegorical projects that were published in his 1993 book Condemned Building. Examples of Darden’s exquisite draftsmanship, which one student described as combining aspects of both “fairy tales and nightmares,” will be on display Sept. 19 - Oct. 10 in the first floor gallery of Vol Walker Hall.
Peter Schneider was born and educated in South Africa, earning a bachelor of architecture with distinction from the University of Cape Town. He was a principal and managing partner with Uytenbogaardt, Macaskill and Schneider Architects, Urban Designers and City Planners in Cape Town before moving to the United States in 1977. He has taught architecture and directed graduate and undergraduate architecture programs in Alabama, Louisiana and Colorado. His research has ranged widely, from the role of the square in ancient Egyptian architecture to teaching sustainable design. An ongoing focus has been the history of the architect; in particular how the architect’s “mind, motives, manners, methods and mythologies” have shaped the natural and cultural landscape and affected the discipline’s traditions.
Schneider’s writings on the history of the architect, architectural pedagogy, the interactions of building and landscape, and the architect's methods and practices have been widely published, as has his research into the work of Douglas Darden. He met and appointed Darden to teach in the graduate program at the University of Colorado in 1989. When Darden died of leukemia in 1996, Schneider was asked to assemble the Darden archive. Working with Darden’s notes, sketches, drawings and other materials over the past twelve years has given him a unique perspective on Darden’s mind, manners and methods.
This lecture is the 2008 Charles Thompson Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Cromwell Architects and Engineers.