Lars Lerup

Lars Lerup, a designer and writer, is Professor of Architecture at Rice School of Architecture (RSA) in Houston (Texas) and Visiting Professor at Hochschule Anhalt (Anhalt University of Applied Sciences) in Dessau. He was William Ward Watkin Professor and Dean of the RSA from 1993 to 2009. Previously, he taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley. His work focuses on the intersection of nature and culture in the contemporary American metropolis in general, and in Houston in particular. He is currently finishing a new book entitled »Toxic Ecology: At the Limit of the Entrepreneurial City« which examines the consequences of the city's relentless growth and expansion on diverse natural systems, and further, how those consequences will affect the future of the city.

Lars Lerup is the Harry K. and Albert K. Smith Professor of Architecture and the Dean Emeritus at Rice School of Architecture, Houston, Texas and Professor Emeritus of University of California at Berkeley. He was awarded Doctor honoris causa in technology by Lund University, Sweden in 2001. Born in Sweden, he holds degrees in Engineering (Sweden), Architecture (UC Berkeley) and Urban Design (GSD, Harvard). Lars Lerup has written several books: »Villa Prima Facie« 1976, »Building the Unfinished« 1977 (also published in German), »Planned Assaults« 1987 (also published in Chinese), »After the City« 2000, and some fifty essays in international magazines. Lerup’s art and design work includes drawings, paintings, architectural projects and competitions for new towns (Taipei, Taiwan), buildings, houses (California, Texas and Switzerland), and furniture. His work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Zurich, Moscow and Stockholm. His most recent book »One Million Acres & No Zoning« was published in 2010. He is currently completing two book manuscripts, »The Life and Death of Objects« and »The Jungle & The City: And Other Stories«. Lerup was elected Swedish American by Vasa Orden in 2004. He was the Harold W. Brunner Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome 2009–2010. Lerup was elected an associate member of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory »Cluster Image Knowledge Gestaltung« in 2013.

Research fields

Architecture, research on metropolises, urban development.