Dr. Peter L. Laurence

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS 

• Associate Professor of Architecture, Clemson University School of Architecture

BIO

Peter L. Laurence is Associate Professor of Architecture at Clemson University School of Architecture, where he teaches design studios, architecture history and theory courses, and elective courses in urban design history, theory, and practice. He holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design (‘99) and PhD in Architecture from University of Pennsylvania (’09). Much of his research has focused on the life and ideas of the urban theorist Jane Jacobs and he is internationally known as a Jane Jacobs biographer. His other research interests include architecture pedagogy and intersections of architecture and urban design history and theory.

PH.D. DISSERTATION

Jane Jacobs, American Architectural Criticism, and Urban Design Theory, 1935–65

RECENT ARTICLES

• “Jane Jacobs and Dark Age America,” Essays on Jane Jacobs (Samhällsbyggandet son mysterium: Jane Jacobs idéer om människor, städer och ekonomier), Jesper Meijling and Tigran Haas, eds. Lund, Sweden: Nordic Academic Press, 2018; Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2020.
• “Jane Jacobs’s Urban Ethics,” Cities 91 (Aug. 2019), 29–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2018.02.028
• “Modern (or Contemporary) Architecture circa 1959,” A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture: 1960–2010, Elie Haddad and David Rifkind, eds. London: Ashgate, 2014. 
• “Jane Jacobs, the Townscape Movement, and the Emergence of Critical Urban Design,” Townscapes of Modernity: Alternative Visions of Reconstruction, J.R. Pendlebury, E. Erten, P. Larkham, eds. London: Routledge, 2014.