The Deborah J. Norden Fund 1997

“Presence and weight in European architecture”

In 1997 the Architectural League awarded one grant to Philip Ryan, who traveled to Italy, Switzerland, France, and the United Kingdom to explore how buildings can reinforce a sense of place. Through his travels he came to a definition of architectural presence: the intrinsic connections of a construction to its historical and physical context. Ryan explored this concept by photographing and sketching buildings that exhibited a “definitive response to their place through construction, scale, site, and material selection.”

Philip Ryan now works for Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects in New York and is a general partner at the Brooklyn Digital Foundry, a web and graphic design firm based in Brooklyn.  He has taught graduate studio design at the City College of New York and has served as an architectural critic at the Rhode Island School of Design, University of Texas at Austin, and Yale University.