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Coleman Coker / Graduate Program in Architecture Lecture

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Coleman Coker (born 1951 in Memphis , TN ) is an American architect and artist best known for the Bridges Center (2005), the Patterson Clinic (2004),Texas Twister at Rey Rosa Ranch (2003), the Shiloh Falls Residence (1997), the Barton Residence (1992) and the Cook House (1991).

Coker founded buildingstudio in 1999 after a thirteen year partnership with Samuel Mockbee as Mockbee/Coker Architects. In 1995 their work was collected in, Mockbee/Coker, Thought and Process. With the formation of buildingstudio Coker sought to blur the boundaries between art, architecture, craft and thinking. His work puts a strong emphasis on the phenomenological quality of presence and being in the world through the things we make as one small part of that interconnected whole.

Coker has earned numerous honors, including a P/A Design Award for low-cost housing, “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty”. In 1991 he was recognized by the Architectural League of New York in their Emerging Voices Series. He has received two Record Houses Awards from Architectural Record, a National AIA Honor Award and was selected for Architectural Record's “The Millennium - Futures to Come,” Visionary Projects for the 21st Century. His work has been highlighted in various exhibits including MoMA, SF MoMA, Wexner Center for the Arts, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Triennial and the National Building Museum in Washington , D.C. where he has work in their permanent collection.

Coker holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Memphis College of Art and in 2008 received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from there. He was director of the Memphis Center of Architecture which focused on urban design issues for advanced students of architecture through thinking with the hands—hand-thinking. He has been the visiting Favrot Chair at Tulane University School of Architecture and the E. Fay Jones Chair at the University of Arkansas. Coker has lectured extensively at universities and professional forums and has participated in numerous design juries across the country. He was awarded the Rome Prize in 1996 from the American Academy in Rome and was a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1994.

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  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Teri Nagel
  • Created:01/11/2013
  • Modified By:Fletcher Moore
  • Modified:10/07/2016