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Witold Rybczynski

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Witold Rybczynski
Born1 March 1943 (1943-03) (age 82)
Edinburgh, Scotland
NationalityCanadian-American
Alma materMcGill University
OccupationArchitect
AwardsJ. Anthony Lukas Book Prize (2000)
Vincent Scully Prize (2007)

Witold Rybczynski (born 1 March 1943) is a Canadian American architect, professor and writer. He is the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor Emeritus of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.[1]

Early life

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Rybczynski was born in Edinburgh of Polish parentage and raised in Surrey, England, before moving at a young age to Canada. He attended Loyola College in Montreal. He received Bachelor of Architecture (1966) and Master of Architecture (1972) degrees from McGill University in Montreal.[1][2]

Career

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Rybczynski has written around 300 articles and papers on the subjects of housing, architecture, and technology, many of which are aimed at a non-technical readership. His work has been published in a wide variety of magazines, including The Wilson Quarterly, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker.[3] From 2004 to 2010, he was architecture critic for Slate.[4]

He taught at McGill University (1974–1993) and the University of Pennsylvania (1993–2012), and served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 2004 to 2012.[5] He now lives in Philadelphia and is Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He was married to Shirley Hallam, who died in 2021.[6]

Awards and honors

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Rybczynski's book Home: A Short History of an Idea was nominated for the 1986 Governor General's Award for non-fiction, and A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and North America in the Nineteenth Century won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and was short-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize in 2000.[7][8][9]

In 2007 Rybczynski was the recipient of the Seaside Prize and the Vincent Scully Prize, awarded by the National Building Museum.[1] Rybczynski is a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.[10] In 2014 he received a National Design Award for Design Mind from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.[11]

Rybczynski is an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and an honorary member of the American Society of Landscape Architects.[1] He has received the AIA Collaborative Honors, and the Pennsylvania AIA President's Award.[12][13] He holds honorary doctorates from McGill University and the University of Western Ontario.[1]

Works

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External videos
video icon Booknotes interview with Rybczynski on A Clearing in the Distance, 17 October 1999, C-SPAN
video icon Presentation by Rybczynski on A Clearing in the Distance, 12 May 1999, C-SPAN
video icon Presentation by Rybczynski on One Good Turn, 13 September 2000, C-SPAN
  • Paper Heroes: Appropriate Technology: Panacea or Pipe Dream? (1980)
  • Taming the Tiger: The Struggle to Control Technology (1983)
  • Home: A Short History of an Idea (1986)
  • The Most Beautiful House in the World (1989)
  • Waiting for the Weekend (1991)
  • McGill: A Celebration (1991)
  • Looking Around: A Journey Through Architecture (1992)
  • A Place for Art/Un lieu pour l'art: The Architecture of the National Gallery of Canada (1993)
  • City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World (1995)
  • A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and North America in the Nineteenth Century (1999)
  • One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw (2000)
  • The Look of Architecture (2001)
  • The Perfect House: A Journey with Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio (2002)
  • Vizcaya: An American Villa and Its Makers (2006), co-written with Laurie Olin
  • Last Harvest: How A Cornfield Became New Daleville: Real Estate Development in America (2007)
  • My Two Polish Grandfathers: And Other Essays on the Imaginative Life (2009)
  • Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas About Cities (2010)
  • The Biography of a Building: How Robert Sainsbury and Norman Foster Built a Great Museum (2011)
  • How Architecture Works: A Humanist's Toolkit (2013)
  • Mysteries of the Mall: And Other Essays (2015)
  • Now I Sit Me Down: From Klismos to Plastic Chair: A Natural History (2016) ISBN 978-0374223212[14]
  • Charleston Fancy: Little Houses and Big Dreams in the Holy City (2019)
  • The Story of Architecture (2022)
  • The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Car (2024)

See also

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References

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Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e "Witold Rybczynski Weitzman". www.design.upenn.edu. University of Penssylvania. Retrieved 27 July 2025.
  2. ^ Brown, Patricia. "A Place to Shelter Dreams". NYTimes.com. New York Times. Retrieved 27 July 2025.
  3. ^ "Authors: Witold Rybczynski". The Atlantic.
  4. ^ "Authors: Witold Rybczynski". Slate.
  5. ^ Thomas E. Luebke, ed., Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2013): Appendix B, p. 554.
  6. ^ "Portrait of a Marriage in Six Homes, The American Scholar, Winter 2021.
  7. ^ "J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project winners". Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
  8. ^ "Rybczynski, Witold - Archival Collections Catalogue". archivalcollections.library.mcgill.ca. McGill University.
  9. ^ "Witold Rybczynski Archives". Literary Review of Canada. Literary Review of Canada.
  10. ^ "Design Futures Council Senior Fellows" Archived 6 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ "Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Announces Winners of the 15th Annual National Design Awards Smithsonian Institution". www.si.edu. Smithsonian Institute.
  12. ^ "Past Special Award Recipients". AIA Pennsylvania. American Institute or Architects - Pennsylvania.
  13. ^ "Book Review, Starred". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 26 May 2016.
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