Witold Rybczynski

CFA Service: 2004–2012

Witold Rybczynski, FAIA, is a prominent writer and thinker on topics involving the built environment.  He is the author of several books and frequently contributes to publications such as the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Architectural Record, Slate, and Preservation. His books include The Perfect House: A Journey with the Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio; The Look of Architecture; City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World; Last Harvest: From Cornfield to New Town; and Home: A Short History of an Idea. Rybczynski's book,  A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century, won numerous awards, including the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Christopher Award.  He was a senior fellow of the Design Futures Institute in 2003; a member of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America council of advisors and of the Monuments, Memorials and Museums Consultant Group; and an advisor to the Library of American Landscape History.  Rybczynski received a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1966 and a master’s degree in architecture in 1972, both from McGill University.  He worked for a time at Moshe Safdie & Associates in the late 1960s and, from 1970 to 1982, had his own architectural practice.  He was a professor at McGill University from 1975 to 1993 before joining the University of Pennsylvania faculty, where he has served as the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism.