HOUSTON PARKS BOARD 2022 ANNUAL LUNCHEON

In 28 years as the architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune, Blair Kamin wrote with clarity and power about all aspects of the built environment, from skyscrapers and museums to parks and public housing. His “activist criticism” not only shaped civic debate but often influenced its outcome, bringing him journalism’s highest honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, awarded in 1999. A graduate of Amherst College and the Yale School of Architecture, where he wrote his masters thesis on downtown Houston, Kamin was a Nieman Foundation for Journalism fellow at Harvard in 2012–13. In addition to lecturing widely and discussing architecture on numerous television and radio programs, he has authored or edited five books, including three collections of his columns published by the University of Chicago Press, Why Architecture Matters: Lessons from Chicago (2001), Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age (2010) and Who Is the City For? Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago (November 2022). Kamin’s work also has been recognized by the Society of Architectural Historians and the International Committee of Architectural Critics. He lives in Chicago’s northern suburbs.