René Davids
René Davids, FAIA (born Santiago, Chile) received his bachelor of
architecture degree from the Universidad de Chile and on a British Council
Fellowship, a master’s degree in environmental design from the Royal College of
Art in London. He headed a Diploma School Unit at the Architectural Association
School for eight years and also taught at the Royal College of Art and the
Macintosh School in Glasgow. Before becoming Professor of Architecture and
Urban Design at the UC Berkeley School of Architecture, he taught architecture
at the University of California, San Diego, the Pontificia Universidad Católica
de Chile in Santiago and the University of New Mexico.
René Davids is Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a member of the Colegio de Arquitectos de Chile. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a Progressive Architecture Award for research on the hillside elevators of Valparaíso, Chile and is currently working on a book that examines the relationship between technology, topography and urbanism in selected North and South American cities.
He received with Christine Killory a Graham Foundation Fellowship for As Built: Theory of Practice, a continuing biannual series of publications on technical and material innovation in architecture by Princeton Architectural Press. Davids is also a principal of Davids Killory Architecture a firm that has received national and international recognition for design: AIA National Honor Awards for Sunrise Place, Daybreak Grove, and Observatory House, Federal Design Awards for Sunrise Place and Daybreak Grove and Progressive Architecture Awards for Daybreak Grove and Sunrise Place, as well as numerous other wards and the work of the firm has been published widely.
