GEORGE DODDS

Associate Professor, School of Architecture
Curriculum Vita

Since joining the University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design in 2000 Dr. Dodds has been an editorial consultant on several book projects including Kieran and Timberlake’s Manuel, and has published two books. Building Desire: On the Barcelona Pavilion (Routledge, 2005) and Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture (MIT Press, 2002), the latter co-edited with Robert Tavernor, the Director of Architecture and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics. In Building Desire, Dodds explores the pavilion's mythography and mythology. He focuses on a small group of canonical photographs central to the stories that comprise its complicity in the enduring myth of modernity. Dodds writes in response to two important and recent events in the life of the Barcelona Pavilion. In 1986, a new Barcelona Pavilion was built on the site of the 1929 German Pavilion. That decade also marked the 150th anniversary of photography and the centenary of Mies (1886-1969). Since then, much has been published about all three, jointly and singly, more than doubling the combined literature on Mies from the preceding seven decades, yet the unique photographic phenomenon of the Barcelona Pavilion remains relatively unexamined. Stanislaus Fung, Head of History and Theory, Architecture Program, The University of New South Wales, commented that “with detailed readings and nuanced discussion, this book is sure to stimulate informed debate.”

Body and Building is a collection original writings largely culled from presentations given at a Festschrift organized by Dr. Dodds in 1996, in honor of Joseph Rykwert, one of the central architectural historians and theorists of the post-war years. The three-day international conference was held at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art. The London-based Building Design, called the collection “A fitting tribute to the first 75 years of the Rykwert stable." Kate Fusin, writing in The Architect’s Journal, commented that it is a collection of "... fascinating essays of lasting interest, to which a short review cannot do justice.” In Body and Building, an international group of architects, architectural historians, and theorists examines the relation of the human body and architecture. The essays view well-known buildings, texts, paintings, ornaments, and landscapes from the perspective of the body's physical, psychological, and spiritual needs and pleasures. Topics include Greek temples; the churches of Tadao Ando in Japan; Renaissance fortresses and paintings; the body, space, and dwelling in Wright's and Schindler's houses in North America; the corporeal dimension of Carlo Scarpa's landscapes and gardens; theory from Vitruvius to the Renaissance and Enlightenment; and Freudian psychoanalysis. Both books have been reviewed widely in North America, The United Kingdom, and Australia. Michael Benedikt wrote extensively on Body and Building in summer 2007 issue of the Harvard Design Review.

During the past eight years, Dr. Dodds has published twelve single-authored peer-reviewed papers, several translations, book chapters, and articles for professional journals. He has also delivered numerous invited lectures, plenary addresses, and papers at national and international venues. For five years he served on the Editorial Board Journal of Architectural Education (JAE). He co-edited with Kazys Varnelis (Columbia University), the theme issue “1966: Forty Years After,” (February 2006). In September 2007 he co-edited with Jori Erdman (LSU), the JAE theme issue “Architectural Design as Research, Scholarship, and Inquiry.” In 2006, Dr. Dodds was named the new Executive Editor of the JAE and, that same year, the University of Tennessee’s James R. Cox Professor. The Cox is a three-year Professorship (with stipend). Established by the Musgraves family, it honors the work of faculty in the performance arts and the environmental studies.

In 2007 Dr. Dodds was the Interim Director of, and instrumental in establishing, the University of Tennessee’s new Master of Landscape Architecture Program. It will be the first professional landscape architecture program in Tennessee. At the 2007 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture National Conference (ACSA) he was named an ACSA Distinguished Professor, a title held by only sixty professors in North America. In 2008, he became a founding member of the ACSA’s Academy of Distinguished Professors, which will parallel the work of the AIA’s College of Fellows (FAIA).

Dr. Dodds earned his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Detroit and Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He has practiced in offices in Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. During his doctoral studies he was fellow in Landscape Studies at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Library and Research Center in Washington, D.C., and has been a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome where he continued his research on his dissertation topic and current Graham Foundation-funded book project “Landscape and Garden in the Work of Carlo Scarpa.”

He has taught approximately 2,000 students in studios, seminars, and lecture courses at several universities and foreign study programs since he entered academe in 1985 including Giancarlo di Carlo’s 1999 International Laboratory for Architecture and Urbanism in Venice. Dr. Dodds’s research and teaching focuses on building bridges among the discrete disciplinary boundaries of design, history, theory, and criticism – in particular landscape and architectural production. His work has been funded by The Graham Foundation, The Architectural History Foundation, The Canadian Centre for Architecture, The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, The Center for Italian Studies Salvatori Award, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and The English Speaking Union the United States. He has been awarded the American Institute of Architects Henry Adams Medal and Certificate of Merit.

In 1979 he was the founding editor of the University of Detroit’s journal Dichotomy (which remains in print) and in 2000 was the last editor of the last (digital) edition of the University of Pennsylvania’s journal VIA.

Oxford American article on Jenkins House, designed by BarberMcMurry
June 2008

An Interview with George Dodds, "On the Quality of METU Faculty of Architecture Building and the Changing Circumstances in Publishing"
Fall 2007

“On the Disciplining the Architectural Profession,” Plenary Address, 4th Architecture and Its Education Conference, Middle East Technical, University, Ankara, Turkey + The Chamber of Architects of Turkey
November 2007

Article from University of Detroit Alumni Newsletter, Nautilus
Spring 2007