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2009 National Conference on the Beginning Design Student
College of Art and Design, LSU, Baton Rouge, LA
March 12-14, 2009

Speakers:

Alexander Caragonne

Alexander Caragonne studied architecture at the University of Texas at Austin where he came under the influence of an important group of young teachers. Hired by Director Harwell Hamilton Harris and subsequently provided the opportunity to implement a new teaching program there, this group which later came to be known as the “Texas Rangers”, was comprised of Colin Rowe, Berhard Hoesli, John Hejduk, Robert Slutzky, Ira Rubin, Lee Hirsche and later John Shaw, Werner Seligman and Lee Hodgden. Only in existence for 4 years, this promising program ceased as all were either fired or resigned after a failed struggle with an old guard. Nevertheless, transplanted to other schools, the seeds that were planted in Texas grew and set forth new shoots at Cornell, the ETH in Zurich, Cooper Union, Syracuse and other venues. After graduation Caragonne worked as an Associate with O’Neil Ford, subsequently enrolling in Cornell University’s Graduate Studies Program in Urban Design under Colin Rowe in 1966. Caragonne has practiced as an architect both in San Antonio, Texas, Ithaca, New York, Newport Beach, California, in London, UK and Osnabrück, Germany for over 30 years. He has taught at Cornell, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and Columbia University in NY, the University of Texas at Austin, San Antonio College, and the University of Texas at San Antonio. From 1989-91 he was Chair of the Monterey Design Conference. He has published The Texas Rangers; Notes from an Architectural Underground (MIT Press) and edited a three-volume edition of his mentor Colin Rowe’s essays; As_I_Was_Saying; Recollections_and_Miscellaneous_Essays also published by MIT Press. He is presently retired in San Antonio while working on a new book, Teaching Architecture.

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