Architecture Lecture: Edward Ford

Edward Ford is the author of the two volumes of The Details of Modern Architecture (MIT, 1990, 1996; German edition: 1994, Japanese Edition: 2016). The New York Review of Books called it, “an exceptional book,” and Kenneth Frampton wrote that it was “An indispensable work for all those involved with the tectonics of the discipline.” It has become a standard reference and text in both history and architecture courses in most universities around the world. In 2011 Barry Bergdoll, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, named The Details of Modern Architecture to a list of “Books Every Architect Should Read.” In 2011 Ford published The Architectural Detail (Princeton Architectural Press, Chinese Edition 2016), which Designers and Books named as one of the notable books of the year. He has written four book introductions and has contributed articles to Architectural Design, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, eAV, Detail, Harvard Design Magazine, The Oxford American, Places, and Perspecta. He was a consultant to the 1992 American Heritage Dictionary, a contributor to A Companion to Twentieth Century Architecture (Wiley 2018), and is on the editorial board of Architectural Graphic Standards.

His own architectural work is the subject of Five Houses, Ten Details (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009, Chinese Edition 2015), and his design work has been published in books such as The New American House and 18 Houses and in periodicals including Japan Architect, Competitions, ARQ: The University of Cambridge Journal of Architecture, Inform, and has been exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Foundation for Architecture, and the Sigal Gallery in Washington DC. He won second prize in the 1990 Matteson Library Competition, third prize in the 1990 Japan Architect Competition, and two awards in the 2013 Washington AIA Unbuilt Architecture Program. In 2002 the Ford house won an Honor Award for Design from the Virginia AIA and in 2012 was featured on the House and Garden Channel’s Extreme Homes.

In addition to his current appointment at the University of Arkansas, Ford has taught at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Virginia, Princeton University, and Columbia University. He was the McDermott Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin (2020), the Pietro Belluschi Visiting Professor at the University of Oregon (2009), and the Thomas Jefferson Visiting Fellow at Downing College at the University of Cambridge (2004). In September of 2018 the work of one of his design studios, taught with Luis Pancorbo, was selected by Architecture Magazine for The Studio Prize “highlighting the most innovative courses in architectural schools across North America.” He has been an artist in residence at Grand Canyon, Great Basin, and Petrified Forest National Parks and at the Cape Cod National Seashore, and was a fellow at The MacDowell Colony in 2014 and 2018. His work has been supported by grants from the Graham Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He graduated from Washington University with a BA in 1971 and an MArch in 1972. He has lectured at over thirty universities and other institutions, including the National Building Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Grand Canyon Artist in Residence Program, the Architektur Zentrum, Vienna, the Norske Arkitektakademi, Rice University, Washington University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, the University of Cambridge, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Versailles, the Alvar Aalto University in Helsinki, and the Boston Society of Architects.