Witold Rybczynski
Witold Rybczynski (born in 1943, in Edinburgh, Scotland), is a Canadian architect, professor and writer.
Rybczynski was born in Edinburgh of Polish parentage and raised in Surrey, England before moving at a young age to Canada. He received Bachelor of Architecture (1960) and Master of Architecture (1972) degrees from McGill University in Montreal.
Rybczynski has written more than fifty articles and papers on the subject of housing, architecture, and technology, many of which are aimed at a non-technical readership and have been met with considerable success.
After several years spent teaching at McGill University, he now lives in Philadelphia and is the Martin and Margy Myerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.
Awards and recognition
His book Home: A History of An Idea won the 1986 Governor General's Award for non-fiction.
His book A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and North America in the Nineteenth Century was short-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize in 2000.
Bibliography
- Paper Heroes: Appropriate Technology: Panacea or Pipe Dream? (1980)
- Taming the Tiger: The Struggle to Control Technology (1983)
- Home: A 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)