Douglas Darden

Joseph Douglas Darden was an American architectural designer, artist, writer, and instructor. He is most notable for his collection of visionary architecture published in his book, Condemned Building, in 1993. Darden died at the age of 44 in the spring of 1996 from leukemia.

While still attending the GSD, Darden became the chief studio instructor for the Architecture Career Discovery Program in 1982. After graduate school he became a visiting lecturer at the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. for the spring semester 1984, teaching a graduate seminar on the American industrial landscape. From September 1984 until 1987 Darden taught architectural design as an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University in New York, New York. From January 1987 until 1988 he taught architectural design as a special lecturer at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey. In 1989 Darden moved back to his home state of Colorado to teach. He became a senior instructor at the University of Colorado Denver in the fall of 1990, teaching advanced-level architectural design studios and lecture courses. He continued to teach at the University of Colorado Denver until shortly before his death.

Beginning soon after the completion of his graduate studies at Harvard, Darden began writing and designing, publishing essays on architectural theory, as well as publishing theoretical architectural designs (which were later printed in Condemned Building), lecturing at various universities and conferences, and exhibiting various works in galleries and group shows (one notable exhibition was of his Museum of Impostors in the gallery Artists Space in the group show From Here to Eternity).

In the course of his career he was the recipient of several fellowships, honors, and awards. Some of the most distinguished are the Entering Professional Designer Project Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984 for his work Museum of Impostors; The Young Architects Forum winner (now Architectural League of New York) in 1985, also for Museum of Impostors; recipient of a traveling grant from the Graham Foundation in 1988 for Hostel; and a Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 1989, during which he developed Hostel, Temple Forgetful, and Confessional (see also List of Fellows of the American Academy in Rome). Darden was also listed as one of the leading fifty contemporary architects by Yoichi Iijima in 1993, along with Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Lebbeus Woods, and Eric Owen Moss.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023