Dalibor Vesely, Czech-English historian, author, and academic (b. 1934)
Dalibor Vesely (19 June 1934 – 31 March 2015) was a Czech-born architectural historian and theorist who was influential through his teaching and writing in promoting the role of hermeneutics and phenomenology as part of the discourse of architecture and of architectural design.
Vesely was one of the most outstanding architectural teachers of the late twentieth century. As well as inspiring generations of students, he taught some of the current leading architects and architectural historians, such as Daniel Libeskind, Eric Parry, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow. He began teaching at the University of Essex, before moving to the Architectural Association in London and in 1978 to the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture, where he also started an M.Phil. programme in History and Philosophy of Architecture with Peter Carl. Together with Peter Carl, his teaching and theoretical approach became associated and dominated the Cambridge Architecture School in the 1980s and early 1990s. After retiring from his full-time post in Cambridge, Vesely continued to teach there, remaining Director of Studies at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and he also taught Architectural History and Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and was an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Manchester School of Architecture. In 2005 he was recipient of the CICA Bruno Zevi Book Award granted by the International Committee of Architectural Critics for his book "Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation". In 2006 the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) honoured Dalibor Vesely with the Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Architectural Education and in 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the RIBA in recognition of both his lifetime contributions to architectural theory and to teaching.