"Style is a function of theme. Style is not imposed on subject-matter, but arises from it. Style is truth to thought. The correct [gesture], the true [color], the perfect [form] are always 'out there' somewhere; the [architect's] task is to locate them by whatever means (s)he can. For some this means no more than a trip to the supermarket and a loading-up of the metal basket; for others it means being lost on a plain in Greece, in the dark, in snow, in the rain, and finding what you seek only by some rare trick . . ."

[Adaptations from the writer's to the architect's purpose are mine.]

"Flickr is fabulous! If only architecture could be more like it." **

I grew up in the South, received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Auburn University in 1972, and after apprenticeships with Harry Wolf in North Carolina and Robert Hecht and Ed Burdeshaw in Georgia, returned to my native Mississippi in 1976 to begin my own practice. For reasons I still do not fully understand, I gave up my aspirations for becoming the William Faulkner of southern architecture in my early thirties, and left Mississippi for Harvard University, where I received a Master in Architecture degree in 1984.

I was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard, subsequently taught for two years at Tulane University, and then until 1994 directed the architectural studies program of the Wesleyan University Art Department, teaching architecture as well as drawing courses. In 2012 I was a Visiting Professor at Smith College, teaching the Introduction to Architecture Studio. I am currently the Client Liaison for the First Year Building Project at the Yale School of Architecture.

I have lectured and been a visiting critic at numerous schools of architecture, and have been architect of record for over sixty completed buildings.

In 2014, I was very very happy to have been elected to the Board of the Yale Summer Cabaret, and in 2018 I joined the Board of New Haven’s Collective Consciousness Theatre. My heart lies close to theatre, and theatre to my heart, and these relationships are thrilling for me.

In 2015 I joined the Housing Committee at Columbus House, Inc., and in the fall of 2016 joined the Board. The work of Columbus House is humbling, and begs the very question of the architect's purpose: "Columbus House’s mission is to serve people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless by providing shelter and housing and by fostering their personal growth and independence."

My most cherished architectural mentors have been (chronologically) Robert Faust, Robert Samuelson, Stanley Tigerman, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, and – mostly in absentia – Frank Gehry. I have studied painting with Florence Nash and photography with Eugene Richards, I am a member of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, and I have been hit by lightning.

You can't make this stuff up.

Ben Ledbetter

Architect

599 Chapel Street

Wooster Square

New Haven, CT 06511 USA

203.782.1912

bl@benledbetter.com

**My dear teacher Stanley Tigerman said this to our studio with him at Harvard over thirty years ago. Though he said life, not flickr. We didn't know about flickr then.

For more and differently focused information, please see my web site:

www.benledbetter.com