Ledbetter, Architect's photostream  

"Style is a function of theme. Style is not imposed on subject-matter, but arises from it. Style is truth to thought. The correct [gesture], the true [color], the perfect [form] are always 'out there' somewhere; the [architect's] task is to locate them by whatever means he can. For some this means no more than a trip to the supermarket and a loading-up of the metal basket; for others it means being lost on a plain in Greece, in the dark, in snow, in the rain, and finding what you seek only by some rare trick . . ."

––––– Julian Barnes, FLAUBERT'S PARROT

[Adaptations from the writer's to the architect's purpose are mine.]

"Flickr is fabulous! If only architecture could be more like it." *

I grew up in the South, took a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Auburn University in 1972, and after apprenticeships with Harry Wolf in North Carolina and Robert Hecht and Ed Burdeshaw in Georgia, returned to my native Mississippi in 1976 to begin my own practice. I forfeited my aspirations for becoming the William Faulkner of southern architecture in my early thirties, and left Mississippi for Harvard University, where I received a Master in Architecture degree in 1984. I was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard, subsequently taught for two years at Tulane University, and then until 1994 directed the architectural studies program of the Wesleyan University Art Department, teaching architecture as well as drawing courses. I have lectured and been a visiting critic at numerous schools of architecture, and have been architect of record for over sixty completed buildings.

In 1996 the Yale School of Architecture held a retrospective exhibition of my work and the work of the non-profit architectural foundation which I then directed, ARCHITECTURE THEATRE pro.ME.THE.US.

My most cherished architectural mentors have been Robert Samuelson, Stanley Tigerman, Peter Eisenman, and Daniel Libeskind. I have studied painting with Florence Nash and photography with Eugene Richards, I am a member of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, and I have been hit by lightning.

You can't make this stuff up.

Ben Ledbetter
Architect
129 Church Street #814
New Haven, CT 06510 USA
203.782.1912
bl@benledbetter.com

*My dear teacher Stanley Tigerman said this to me almost thirty years ago. Though he said life, not flickr. We didn't know about flickr then.

www.benledbetter.com/

www.newyork-architects.com/benledbetter