Gail Peter Borden attended Rice University, simultaneously receiving bachelor of arts degrees (all cum laude) in fine arts, art history, and architecture. Upon graduation, he won the prestigious William Ward Watkin Traveling Fellowship, the AIA Certificate for Excellence, the Chillman Prize, and the John Swift Medal in Fine Arts. After receiving a Texas Architectural Foundation Scholarship, Borden returned to Rice for his BARCH, also cum laude. 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 programs 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. As principal of Borden Partnership since 2002, his design work has won numerous recognitions including: the Architectural League Prize; the AIA Young Architect Award; Building Design and Construction magazine’s “40 Under 40” award; and numerous AIA, ACSA, and RADA awards. 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. His teaching has been recognized with an ACSA New Faculty Teaching Award as one of the top emerging architecture faculty and has received multiple university awards for artistic expression and mentoring. He was named the youngest Fellow of the AIA in the history of California.
His books: 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); and New Essentialism: Material Architecture, 2018 (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.
