Ed Ford
Education
B.S., Washington University; M.Arch., Washington University
Biography
Professor Emeritus Edward Ford is the author of The Details of Modern Architecture (MIT, 1990, German edition: Birkhauser, 1994, Japanese Edition: Maruzen, 2000) and The Details of Modern Architecture, Volume 2 (MIT, 1996, Japanese Edition: Maruzen, 2000), and The Architectural Detail (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), work supported by grants from the Graham Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has published articles in Technology | Architecture + Design, Oz, Architectural Design, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Inform, B, eAV, Detail, Harvard Design Magazine, and Perspecta, and has written a number of book chapters and introductions. He was a contributor to The Wiley Companion to Architecture, consulted on the 1992 American Heritage Dictionary and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Twelfth Edition of Architectural Graphic Standards.
His architectural work is the subject of his third book, Five Houses Ten Details (Princeton Architectural Press, Chinese Edition, China Architecture & Building Press, 2009) and has been published in The New American House, Japan Architect, Competitions, 18 Houses, ARQ, Inform, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Oculus and has been exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Society of Architects and the Chicago Foundation for Architecture. He won second prize in the 1990 Matteson Library Competition and third prize in the 1990 Japan Architect Competition. In 2002 the Ford house won an Honor Award for Design from the Virginia AIA, and in 2013 he won a Washington Unbuilt Architecture Award for “Park and Recreation Structures Revisited” and a Commendation for “Trinity +1.”
He was a Fellow of the MacDowell Art Colony in 2014 and 2018 and was artist in residence at Petrified Forest National Park in 2011, at Cape Cod National Seashore and Grand Canyon National Park in 2012 and at Great Basin National Park in 2014. In 2004 he was the Thomas Jefferson Visiting Fellow at Downing College at the University of Cambridge and in 2010 he was the Pietro Belluschi Visiting Professor at the University of Oregon. He was the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from Washington University in 1997 and his publications have been recognized by the Association of Academic Publishers, the AIA, Designers and Books, Lingua Franca, and the Architects Journal.
He has lectured at the National Building Museum, Alvar Aalto University Helsinki, the University of Cambridge, the Architektur Zentrum, Vienna, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Versailles, and the Norske Arkitektakademi, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Grand Canyon National Park, and over thirty universities and institutions in North America and Europe. He was co-chairman of the 1996 ACSA National Technology Conference.
Professor Ford retired from the University of Virginia in 2018 but continues to write and teach. He was the 2021 Fay Jones Professor of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, the 2020 McDermott Visiting Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas Austin, and a Visiting Professor at Washington University St. Louis in 2019.
