ABOUT

Gail Peter Borden: The way in which we see the world and spend time actually processing what we see is how we understand our environment and ultimately our place within it. Simplicity of form and articulation removes ornament and establishes order. The clarity of geometric, prismatic and perspectival forms provides an essentialism. Through their focus and reduction, form, proportion, material, color all become dominant players that allow us to engage with the touchstones of perception. Through the less we find more by foregrounding those primal elements of our biological and intellectual selves.

My work investigates the relationship of material and process. Form and method are founded in the means by which a thing is made. It is founded in a synthetic vision of art and architecture, bridging between the experiential and emotively perceptual and the rational tectonics of formal systems. Focused on the relationship of the part to holistic form all in relation to the spatial and effectual result, my work, through diverse media, is in search of experiential environments that emerge from the distinctness of a natural place and allow the viewer to fully immerse themselves in an experience to understand and focus. Rooted in perception, the work compliments material abstraction to produce sensorial effect. The result is contextually derived interventions that facilitate viewing and experience that universally engage the way in which we see the world and process how we understand our environment and our place within it.

Gail Peter Borden attended Rice University, simultaneously receiving Bachelor of Arts degrees (all cum laude) in fine arts, art history, and architecture. 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 and principal of Borden Partnership since 2002. 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. 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. Borden has published 7 books on materiality: 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.