A discussion on architecture, planning, and the built environment in conjunction with the launch of Writings on Architecture and the City, George Baird’s collection of critical essays.

George Baird is founder of Baird Sampson Neuert Architects, former Dean and Emeritus Professor at the University of Toronto’s Daniel School of Architecture, and the RAIC’s 2010 Gold Medalist for his career-long contributions to Canadian architecture and cities. From his pioneering application of post-structuralist theory to architecture in Meaning in Architecture, 1969, (Charles Jencks co-editor) to the reflections on Hannah Arendt in his 1995 Space of Appearance, Baird’s writing, editing and teaching has probed the essence of creation and city-dwelling. Similarly, his professional practice from the 1975 urban design study On Building Downtown for the City of Toronto, to Governor-General’s award-winning buildings demonstrate a rare ability to transfer abstract ideas to the contingencies of city-building and construction.

Kenneth Frampton is a British architect, critic, historian and the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. Frampton’s influential publications include Modern Architecture: A Critical History, in its 5th edition this year, and Labour, Work and Architecture, amongst many others.

Reinhold Martin is Associate Professor of Architecture in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, where he directs the PhD program in architecture and the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. He is a member of Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society as well as the Committee on Global Thought.

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