Gail Peter Borden, FAIA, NCARB
Director of Graduate Studies
Professor of Architecture
Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design
University of Houston

Principal
Borden Partnership
www.bordenpartnership.com

Gail Peter Borden attended Rice University, simultaneously receiving Bachelor of Arts degrees (all cum laude) in fine arts, art history, and architecture. Upon graduation, he won the prestigious William Ward Watkin Traveling Fellowship, the AIA Certificate for Excellence, the Chillman Prize, and the John Swift Medal in Fine Arts. After receiving a Texas Architectural Foundation Scholarship, Professor Borden returned to Rice for his BARCH, also cum laude. He went on to Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design to complete a post-professional Masters of Architecture with distinction.

Borden is the Director of Graduate Studies in addition to holding a tenured position as a professor at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design at the University of Houston. As principal of Borden Partnership since 2002, his design work has won numerous recognitions including: the Architectural League Prize; the AIA Young Architect Award; Building Design and Construction magazine’s “40 Under 40” award; and numerous AIA, ACSA, and RADA awards. Borden received artist-in-residence awards from the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas; the Atlantic Center for the Arts; the Borchard Fellowship; and the MacDowell Colony. His teaching has been recognized with an ACSA New Faculty Teaching Award as one of the top emerging architecture faculty and has received multiple university awards for artistic expression and mentoring. He was named the youngest Fellow of the AIA in the history of California.

His artwork is an integral component of a vibrant research based practice. His projects are dedicated to craft across a variety of scales and media. From books, to installations, furniture to paintings and exhibitions, his work continues to act as proof that art has the power to transform the everyday.

Prior to founding his own practice in 2000, Gail Peter Borden began his career in the offices of
Renzo Piano Building Workshop where he developed a synthetic vision of technology and performance dedicated to the production of buildings. Followed by a seminal residency at Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas his work assumed a formal essentialism dedicated to the fundamental touchstones of materiality, geometry and perception.

During the last ten years, his work has received over thirty awards; he has published 7 books on materiality [see below]; received numerous prestigious residencies; published in over fifty books, journals and periodicals, and included in over fifty exhibitions nationally and internationally. Gail’s design and research influence in the field is reflected by numerous invited lectures on his work and his participation in symposia and panel discussions.

His books: Material Precedent: The Typology of Modern Tectonics, 2010 (Wiley Press); Matter: Material Processes in Architectural Production, 2011 (Routledge); Principia: Architectural Principles of Material Form, 2013 (Pearson); Process: Material and Representation in Architecture, 2014 (Routledge); Lineament: Material, Representation and the Physical Figure in Architecture, 2017 (Routledge); New Essentialism: Material Architecture, 2018 (AR+D), and City of Refugees, 2020 (AR+D) all focus on materiality.
As an architect designer, artist, theoretician, and practitioner, Professor Borden’s research and practice focuses on the role of materiality and architecture in contemporary culture.