Though very little has been written about Douglas Darden his work is well known, mostly for the beautiful pencil and charcoal drawings displayed in various exhibitions and for his book Condemned Building, published in 1993. The drawings, while exquisite are slow to reveal themselves. Each plan and section (the only type of drawing in the book) contain references and puns and perform in wonderful ways. Using unpublished archival material this lecture will unpack three modes of representation that reveal the process behind the projects and to demonstrate that Darden understood the word “building” to be a verb and not a known.

Marc J Neveu is the Head of the Architecture Program in The Design School at Arizona State University. In that role, he is helping to imagine what it means to be an architecture program within the model of the New American University. Neveu’s research explores the role of storytelling in both architectural pedagogy and practice. He is currently working on a digital archive of the work of the rhetorical architect, Douglas Darden. He is the current Executive Editor of the biannual peer-reviewed Journal of Architectural Education.

This lecture is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Condemned Buildings and Other Stories: Drawings by Douglas Darden, which is on view at the CCA Hubbell Street Galleries from October 14–31. The CCA Hubbell Street Galleries will be open until 6pm on October 28 for visitors who would like to view Darden's drawings prior to Marc Neveu's lecture.