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Leslie Van Duzer
Professor
Contact details
OFFICE
420 Lasserre
PHONE
604.822.8222
Education
M.Arch, UC Berkeley
BA, UC Berkeley
Biography
After completing her graduate studies in architecture at the University of California Berkeley and briefly practicing in San Francisco with SMWM and Vienna with Hermann Czech, Leslie began her academic career. She has taught at numerous schools in the United States (University of Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, California at Berkeley, Washington University and Arizona State University); Europe (Technical University of Vienna, Prague and Helsinki, the Aarhus School of Architecture); Japan (Hosei University); and Canada (University of British Columbia). Leslie has also taught shorter workshops in Halifax, Ankara and Vienna.
In July 2010, Leslie moved to Vancouver to assume the position of Director of the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at UBC. She oversaw the development of two new degree programs housed within the School: the Master of Urban Design and a dual degree MArch and MLA option; initiated the school’s first university-wide courses; founded a mentor program matching students with professional mentors for the duration of their studies; and, in collaboration with the School’s first advisory board, launched a new non-profit organization, the Urbanarium. Upon the completion of her five-year term as Director, a donor established the generous Leslie Van Duzer SALA Legacy Fund to allow her to continue her outreach efforts.
Leslie is co-author / co-editor of four books (see below). The monographs on Loos’s Villa Müller and Mies’s Krefeld Villas each garnered The Architects’ Journal “Top Ten Books of the Year” award. These four volumes were supported by three Graham Foundation grants, the 1997 Arnold W. Brunner Grant, and a Fulbright Research Grant.
In 2014, Leslie sole-authored House Shumiatcher, the first in a series of building monographs: West Coast Modern Houses. Leslie initiated the series in response to widespread alarm over Vancouver's rapidly disappearing architectural heritage. Two SALA colleagues, Sherry McKay and Chris Macdonald, joined this effort as co-editors and authors. In 2020, the series closed with the publication of the eighth book. Each monograph, published by ORO, was written by a different author; all eight feature photographs by Michael Perlmutter (Sweden) and book design by Pablo Mandel (Buenos Aires).
Leslie’s new, sole-authored book, Almost, Not: The Architecture of Atelier Nishikata (Spring 2021), is an architectural monograph / magic manual about a remarkable but little-known practice in Tokyo.
On Drifting Sand, her newest book project, is based on Leslie’s 350-kilometer walk down the West Coast of Denmark, a coastal landscape under constant threat from erosion and accretion. This is a documentation of the ongoing Sisyphean effort to occupy an inhospitable landscape along the North Sea coast of Jutland.
In 2020, Leslie collaborated with two students, June Geyer and Zeke Kan, to complete a new exhibition: If These Walls Could Talk. Commissioned by the City of Prague Museum, the exhibition runs from December 14, 2020 to August 1, 2021.
Select publications
Books:
Van Duzer, L. (Spring 2021). Almost, Not: The Architecture of Atelier Nishikata. San Francisco: ORO Editions.'
Van Duzer, L. (2014). House Shumiatcher. San Francisco: ORO Editions.
Szadkowska, M., Van Duzer, L. and Černoušková, D., (2009). Adolf Loos: Works in the Czech Lands. Prague: Kant Publishers.
Kleinman, K. & Van Duzer, L. (2005). Mies van der Rohe: Krefeld Villas. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.
Kleinman, K. & Van Duzer, L. (Eds.) (1998). Rudolf Arnheim: Revealing Vision. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Van Duzer, L. & Kleinman, K. (1994, 1997). Villa Müller: A Work of Adolf Loos. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.