Will and Nan Clarkson
Visiting Chair
Antoine Picon
Antoine Picon is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and co-director of Doctoral Programs (PhD & DDes) at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He teaches courses in the history and theory of architecture and technology. Trained as an engineer, architect, and historian, Picon works on the history of architectural and urban technologies from the eighteenth century to the present. His French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment(1988; English translation, 1992) is a synthetic study of the disciplinary "deep structures" of architecture, garden design, and engineering in the eighteenth century, and their transformations as new issues of territorial management and infrastructure-systems planning were confronted. Whereas Claude Perrault (1613-1688) ou la Curiosité d'un classique (1988) traces the origin of these changes at the end of the seventeenth century, L'Invention de l’Ingénieur Moderne, L'Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées 1747-1851 (1992) envisages their full development from the mid-eighteenth century to the 1850s. Picon has also worked on the relations between society, technology and utopia. This is in particular the theme of Les Saint-Simoniens: Raison, Imaginaire, et Utopie (2002), a detailed study of the Saint-Simonian movement that played a seminal role in the emergence of industrial modernity. Picon’s most recent book, Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Profession (2010) offers a comprehensive overview and discussion of the changes brought by the computer to the theory and practice of architecture.
Past Clarkson Visiting Chairs
- 2011 Teddy Cruz
- 2010 Yve Alain Bois
- 2009 Michele Addington
- 2008 Kenneth Frampton
- 2007 Joan Ockman
- 2006 Anthony Vidler
- 2005 Glenn Murcutt
- 2004 Peter Zumthor
- 2004 Michael Kwartler
- 2003 Lars Lerup
- 2003 Gerrit-Jan Knaap
- 2001 Alan Artibise
- 2000 Mark Wigley
- 2000 Michael Storper
- 1999 K. Michael Hayes
- 1998 Robert Yaro
- 1996 Sanford Kwinter
- 1995 Patsy Healey
- 1994 Daniel Hoffman
- 1993 M. Christine Boyer
- 1992 Alberto Perez-Gomez
- 1991 John Forester
- 1990 Marco Frascari
The Clarkson Visiting Chair is an endowed visiting position awarded semiannually to a distinguished scholar or professional in the disciplines of architecture, planning, and design. This award is in recognition of excellence in the pursuit of scholarship and professional application within these disciplines and is made possible by the generous support of Will and Nan Clarkson.
