Associate Professor
Acting Associate Dean
Greene Building, Room 209

518-276-6862

Master of Architecture, University of Virginia; Bachelor of Arts, Bridgewater College

David Bell is an Associate Professor and Acting Associate Dean of Rensselaer’s School of Architecture. His teaching responsibilities have focused on design studio, which he has taught at every level in the school’s curriculum, and courses in the history and theory of architecture, which he teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Professor Bell’s original academic pursuit was in physics but shifted his interests to architecture after two years of graduate study in physics at the University of Virginia, where he received his M. Arch. degree. Since then, Professor Bell practiced architecture in Baltimore, Maryland, where he became a registered architecture, before he acquired his first academic position at the School of Architecture at Kansas State University, where he also continued practicing architecture part-time with a small firm in Manhattan, Kansas. Although Professor Bell is a registered architect, he no longer practices in the profession and has dedicated his efforts to education, research, and writing. Professor Bell’s has written numerous essays on various aspects of the theory of architecture. He is the author of three monographs on the works and ideas of specific architects. Those monographs are Bernini & Borromini: Theater & Heresy, Jefferson’s University as American Dream, and Adolf Loos: The Irritation of Modernity. In addition to writing non-fiction related to various architectural issues, Professor Bell writes science fiction. His most recently published work of fiction is The Dirac Effect. He is currently working on a second novel entitled The Algorithm. Professor Bell is also currently at work on two writing projects related to his architectural interests. One project is a collection of his essays, with revisions, under the title Ruminations. The other is a fulfillment of the Brown’s Fellowship travel grant entitled “A Virtuous Juncture”. This research focuses on speculative analyses of several landscape constructions that involve explorations into the physical phenomena of gravity and light. We all experience these phenomena with a tacit understanding of what they are but they largely remain riddles to both physical science and the arts.