Clive R. Knights

Professor and Director of School
Master of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, 1988
Diploma in Architecture, Portsmouth Polytechnic, 1984
Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, Portsmouth Polytechnic, 1981

Contact: knightsc@pdx.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Current Classes
Arch 530 Contemporary Architectural Theory

Research
Clive R. Knights is Professor of Architecture and Chair of the School of Architecture. He practices architecture and art, in particular mixed media and monotype printmaking. He holds professional architectural design undergraduate and graduate degrees from Portsmouth Polytechnic, UK, and a Master of Philosophy in Architectural History and Theory from Cambridge University (Thesis: "The Place of Mimesis in Architectural Representation," Supervisor: Dalibor Vesely, 1988).

Clive has taught architecture for the past 25 years and was a full-time lecturer at Sheffield University for six years before moving to PSU in 1995 to collaborate in the initiation of the School and its degree programs. His primary areas of interest include the cultural meanings of architectural representation understood through the phenomenology of the human body, with particular reference to the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty; the revelatory capacity of metaphor in poetic work; and speculations in architecural design studio pedagogy.

Publications include many journal articles and book chapters on the theory, history and pedagogy of architecture. These include:

"Gesturing, Marking, Building: Gallery Installation, Portland, Oregon, USA" in Thinking Practices: Reflections on Architectural Research and Building Work, eds. N. Temple and S. Bandyopadhyay, Black Dog Publishing, London, 2007

"Somnambulating Architecture: Wake up and Smell the Bacon," in An Architektur: Produktion und Gebrauch gebauter Umwelt, No. 18, September 2007

"The Fragility of Structure, the Weight of Interpretation: Some Anomolies in the Life and Opinions of Eisenman and Derrida" in InterSections: Architectural Histories and Critical Theories, eds. 1. Borden & J. Rendell, Routledge, London, 2000

"Inhabiting the Chasm: The Dialogue of Lovers" in Journal of Architectural Education, vol. 50, no. 1, September 1996, MIT Press

"The Spaciality of the Roman Domestic Setting: An Interpretation of Symbolic Content" in Architecture and Order: Approaches to Social Space, eds. M. Parker-Pearson and C. Richards, Routledge, London, 1994

The Fluctuation of Likeness: Body Work Swamp" in Scroope - Cambridge Architecture Journal, no. 4, June 1992, pp17-23

He has exhibited design work internationally, including three projects at the 1985 Venice Biennale as a founding partner of Ferenczi Design; and the prize-winning finalist project for the Grand Buildings Competition at the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 1986. He has shown mixed media work in many public settings, such as the Northwest Biennial a the Tacoma Art Museum, Washington, in 2004. He has designed and built several works including the Christiane Millinger Oriental Rug Gallery in Portland, Oregon (with Michael Gibson, 2000), and Riverhouse, a private dwelling on the Columbia River in Cathlamet, Washington (with Louise Foster, 2002). His current, ongoing project is an interpretive study of the 'given' (Serres) predicament of being human incorporating a series of monotypes, mixed media drawings, maquettes and full-scale thematic structures directly engaging the body.