Dalibor Vesely

Who is Dalibor Vesely?

Dalibor Vesely was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1934. He studied engineering, architecture, art history and philosophy in Prague and in Munich and obtained his PhD from Charles University in Prague. He studied with Hans-Georg Gadamer, with whom he kept a correspondence that would last until the end of Gadamer's life. He was also taught by Jan Patočka and has developed an interest in the poetics and hermeneutics of architecture.

Vesely has been influential through his writing and teaching in establishing the role of hermeneutics and phenomenology as part of the discourse of architecture and of architectural design. He has taught some of the current leading architects and architectural historians, such as Daniel Libeskind, Eric Parry, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow. He has taught at the University of Essex, at the Architectural Association in London and since 1978 at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture, where he also started an M.Phil. programme in History and Philosophy of Architecture with Peter Carl. Vesely currently teaches Architectural History and Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and is Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Manchester School of Architecture. In 2005 he was recipient of the CICA Bruno Zevi Book Award granted by the International Committee of Architectural Critics. In 2006 the Royal Institute of British Architects honoured Dalibor Vesely with the Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Architectural Education.