George baird architect biography

George Baird CM was a Canadian architect, scholar, and architectural educator.
George Baird, the Canadian architect, scholar, and educator, died yesterday, October 17.
A member of the Order of Canada.

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Tribute: George Baird (1939–2023)

George Baird, the Canadian architect, scholar, and educator, died yesterday, October 17. He was 84. The immediate cause of death is not known but he had been in ill health.

Baird began teaching at the University of Toronto—from which he received his Bachelor of Architecture degree—in 1967, and remained a part of the faculty until his 1993 appointment as Professor of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2004, he returned to his alma mater in Canada to serve as dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, a position he held until 2009. In a statement, the school expressed: “It is the rare architect whose voice and contributions straddle the worlds of practice and theory so significantly, but Baird’s very much did.”

According to Baird, the book that changed his life was Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition (1958). His own early writings applied theories of semiotics to architecture, helping lay the foundation for the Postmodernism movement. Notably, Meaning in Architecture (1969), a book

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Baird’s visionary realism

George Baird, Writings on Architecture and the City, with an introduction by Francesco Garofalo, Artifice books on architecture, London, 2015

Writings on Architecture and the City contains 24 essays written by Canadian architect George Baird between 1969 and 2013, and an introduction by Francesco Garofalo. The author is the founder of Baird Sampson Neuert in Toronto and Professor Emeritus at the John H. Daniels Faculty of the University of Toronto. He has been dean of the same school and taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The six sections in the anthology, Architecture and Semiotics, Architectural Theory between Structuralism and Phenomenology, Urban Morphology and Architectural Typology,Critical Biography, Public Space Baird clarifies what the relationship between design and political issues should be. By referencing the work of Hanna Arendt, he underlines the relevance of the individual agency expressed by land ownership patterns in urban evolution, as a counterpoint to recent fascinations for postmode

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Architectural Record - December 2023

TRIBUTE: George Baird (1939–2023)

Leopoldo Villardi 2023-12-02 08:44:54

DISTINGUISHED Canadian architect, scholar, and educator George Baird died of kidney failure, in Toronto, on October 17. He was 84.

Baird’s decades-long teaching career began in 1967 at the University of Toronto, where he had received his Bachelor of Architecture degree four years prior. He remained an integral part of the faculty there until his 1993 appointment as professor of architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he later directed the M.Arch. I and M.Arch. II graduate-degree programs. In 2004, Baird returned to his alma mater in Canada to serve as dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, a position he held until 2009. By that time, he was widely recognized as an accomplished practitioner and theorist: “It is the rare architect whose voice and contributions straddle the worlds of practice and theory so significantly,” the school said in a statement, “but Baird’s very much did.”

According to Baird, histori