Though retired from his distinguished professor post in the Texas A&M Department of Architecture, Malcolm Quantrill isn’t slowing down.
He remains active as the director of the Center for the Advancement of Studies in Architecture (CASA), and he was recently appointed as International Representative for the Luis Barragán Chair at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Queretaro, Mexico.
The Barragán Chair is named in honor of Luis Barragán, one of the most respected Mexican architects of the 20th century. In his new position, Quantrill’s prime responsibility is to annually identify and nominate a distinguished, internationally renowned architect to serve as Monterrey Tech’s Luis Barragán Chair.
For 2008. Quantrill selected Graham Phillips, a senior design partner in Foster and Partners of London, England, as the Barragán Chair. Phillips was one of Quantrill’s students at the Liverpool University School of Architecture in the early 1970s. The architect played a major part in the design and construction of Norman Foster’s Hong Kong Shanghai Bank in Hong Kongm which is widely acclaimed as the most original building of the 20th century.
In 2005, Phillips delivered the inaugural Frederick E. Giesecke Lecture at the Texas A&M College of Architecture. He is slated to assume duties as the Luis Barragán Chair at Monterrey Tech this March.
Quantrill’s appointment as International Representative for the Luis Barragán Chair follows years of work with colleagues in Mexico, which resulted in the publication of “Space and Place in the Mexican Landscape: The Evolution of the Colonial City” (Texas A&M University Press, May 2007). He edited the book, written by Monterrey Tech colleagues and collaborators Fernando Nunez, Carlos Arvizu and Ramon Abonce, which is about the influences of ideas and views that gave birth to the built spaces and structures of Mexico, especially those of Queretaro.
Quantrill retired from Texas A&M after serving on the faculty for 23 years, during which he was elevated to distinguished professor — the only member of the College of Architecture faculty to achieve that designation.
He is one of four faculty members from the Department of Architecture who have been recognized as distinguished professors by the Association of Collegiate Schools. The others are Ed Romieniec, David Woodcock and Alan Stacell.
In 2003 Quantrill received the James Haecker Distinguished Leadership Award for Architectural Research from the Architectural Research Centers Consortium — the premier architectural research organization in North America.
Last October, Quantrill was a visiting professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. There, he gave a public lecture, “Materiality and Otherness: Architecture as a Vision Beyond Seeing.” He will present that lecture again, 6 p.m. Monday, April 28 in the College of Architecture’s Preston Geren Auditorium as part of the Department of Architecture’s Spring 2008 Lecture Series.
Last November, Quantrill lectured at the Royal Institute of British Architects of London with Professor Brian Mackay-Lyons of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
MacKay-Lyons was the subject of another book by Quantrill, “Plain Modern.” According to the Princeton Architectural Press, the book’s publisher, Quantrill “weaves together an intimate portrait of MacKay-Lyons and his work, elucidating the ‘peculiar regionality’ of his subject’s architecture.”
He’s been publishing since 1974.
