Alberto Perez-Gomez

Alberto Pérez-Gómez was born in Mexico City in 1949, where he studied architecture and practiced. He did postgraduate work at Cornell University, and was awarded an M.A. and a Ph.D. by the University of Essex (England). He has taught at universities in Mexico, Houston, Syracuse, Toronto, and at London’s Architectural Association. In 1983 he became Director of Carleton University’s School of Architecture. He has lectured extensively around the world and is the author of numerous articles published in major periodicals and books. In January 1987 he was appointed Bronfman Professor of Architectural History at McGill University, where he founded the History and Theory Master’s and Doctoral Programs. He is presently Emeritus Professor.

His book Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (MIT Press, 1983) won the Hitchcock Award in 1984. Later books include Polyphilo or The Dark Forest Revisited (1992), Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge (co-authored with Louise Pelletier) and Built upon Love: Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics (2006). His most recent work titled Attunement: Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science (2016) examines connections between phenomenology, recent cognitive science and emerging language, seeking the production of harmonious and well-tempered atmospheres in architecture and the urban environment. He was co-editor of a well-known, seven volume book series entitled Chora: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, published by McGill-Queen's University Press. A selected collection of his essays titled Timely Meditations, in two volumes, was published by RightAngle International, Montreal in 2016. His most recent work, an illustrated Alliterative Dictionary of Architectural Memories, also in two volumes, was published in September 2024.