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About Bryan Toepfer

Bryan Toepfer, AIA, NCARB, CAPM is the Principal Architect for TOEPFER Architecture, PLLC, an Architecture firm specializing in Residential Architecture and Virtual Reality. He has authored two books, “Contractors CANNOT Build Your House,” and “Six Months Now, ARCHITECT for Life.” He is an Assistant Professor at Alfred State College and has served as the Director of Government Affairs and as the Director of Education for the AIA Rochester Board of Directors. Always eager to help anyone understand the world of Architecture, he hosts the New Books Network – Architecture podcast, is an NCARB Licensing Advisor and helps coach candidates taking the Architectural Registration Exam.

Bryan Toepfer, AIA, NCARB, CAPM is the Principal Architect for TOEPFER Architecture, PLLC, an Architecture firm specializing in Residential Architecture and Virtual Reality. He has authored two books, “Contractors CANNOT Build Your House,” and “Six Months Now, ARCHITECT for Life.” He is an Assistant Professor at Alfred State College and has served as the Director of Government Affairs and as the Director of Education for the AIA Rochester Board of Directors. Always eager to help anyone understand the world of Architecture, he hosts the New Books Network – Architecture podcast, is an NCARB Licensing Advisor and helps coach candidates taking the Architectural Registration Exam. btoepfer@toepferarchitecture

Bryan's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Bryan:

Architecture March 25, 2023

Out of Architecture

The Value of Architects Beyond Traditional Practice

Jake Rudin and Erin Pellegrino

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Jake Rudin and Erin Pellegrino's book Out of Architecture: The Value of Architects Beyond Traditional Practice (Routledge, 2022) is both a call to reassess the architecture profession and its education, and a toolkit …
Architecture March 20, 2023

Climate Justice and Community Renewal

Resistance and Grassroots Solutions

Brian Tokar and Tamra Gilbertson

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Brian Tokar and Tamra Gilbertson's book Climate Justice and Community Renewal: Resistance and Grassroots Solutions (Routledge, 2020) brings together the voices of people from five continents who live, work, and research …
Architecture March 8, 2023

Development, Architecture, and the Formation of Heritage in Late Twentieth-Century Iran

A Vital Past

Ali Mozaffari and Nigel Westbrook

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Development, Architecture, and the Formation of Heritage in Late Twentieth-Century Iran (Manchester UP, 2020) analyses the use of the past and the production of heritage through architectural design in the …
Architecture February 28, 2023

The Building as Screen

A History, Theory, and Practice of Massive Media

Dave Colangelo

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
The Building as Screen: A History, Theory, and Practice of Massive Media (Amsterdam UP, 2019) describes, historicizes, theorizes, and creatively deploys massive media -- a set of techno-social assemblages and …
Architecture February 23, 2023

Reconstructing the Garrick

Adler and Sullivan's Lost Masterpiece

John Vinci

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
For six months in 1961, Richard Nickel, John Vinci, and David Norris salvaged the interior and exterior ornamentation of the Garrick Theater, Adler & Sullivan’s magnificent architectural masterpiece in Chicago’s …
Architecture February 8, 2023

Design with Nature on Cape Cod and the Islands

Jack Ahern

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are special places known for their distinctive flora, including pine-oak forests, sandplain grasslands, and sand dunes peppered with bearberry shrubs …
Architecture September 19, 2022

A History of Solar Power Art and Design

Alex Nathanson

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Alex Nathanson's book A History of Solar Power Art and Design (Routledge, 2021) examines the history of creative applications of photovoltaic (PV) solar power, including sound art, wearable technology, public art …
Architecture August 19, 2022

Spatial Revolution

Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union

Christina E. Crawford

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union (Cornell UP, 2022) is the first comparative parallel study of Soviet architecture and planning to create a narrative arc across …
Architecture August 4, 2022

A Backyard Prairie

The Hidden Beauty of Tallgrass and Wildflowers

Fred Delcomyn and James L. Ellis

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
In 2003 Fred Delcomyn imagined his backyard of two and a half acres, farmed for corn and soybeans for generations, restored to tallgrass prairie. Over the next seventeen years, Delcomyn …
Architecture July 22, 2022

American Unitarian Churches

Architecture of a Democratic Religion

Ann Marie Borys

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
The Unitarian religious tradition was a product of the same eighteenth-century democratic ideals that fueled the American Revolution and informed the founding of the United States. Its liberal humanistic principles …
Architecture July 8, 2022

Formulations

Architecture, Mathematics, Culture

Andrew Witt

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
In Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture (MIT Press, 2022), Andrew Witt examines the visual, methodological, and cultural intersections between architecture and mathematics. The linkages Witt explores involve not the mystic transcendence …
Architecture June 7, 2022

The New Curator

Exhibiting Architecture and Design

Fleur Watson

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
The New Curator: Exhibiting Architecture and Design (Routledge, 2021) examines the challenges inherent in exhibiting design ideas. Traditionally, exhibitions of architecture and design have predominantly focused on displaying finished outcomes or communicating …
Architecture May 20, 2022

Sixteenth Street NW

Washington, DC's Avenue of Ambitions

John DeFerrari and Douglas Peter Sefton

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Sixteenth Street NW in Washington, DC, has been called the Avenue of the Presidents, Executive Avenue, and the Avenue of Churches. From the front door of the White House, this …
Architecture April 19, 2022

Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital

Hilton Judin

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Hilton Judin's book Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital (Routledge, 2021) is the first comprehensive investigation of the architecture of the apartheid state in the period of …
Architecture April 1, 2022

American Urbanist

How William H. Whyte's Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life

Richard K. Rein

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
On an otherwise normal weekday in the 1980s, commuters on busy Route 1 in central New Jersey noticed an alarming sight: a man in a suit and tie dashing across …
Architecture March 11, 2022

Architecture, Philosophy, and the Pedagogy of Cinema

From Benjamin to Badiou

Nadir Lahiji

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Philosophers on the art of cinema mainly remain silent about architecture. Discussing cinema as ‘mass art’, they tend to forget that architecture, before cinema, was the only existing ‘mass art’ …
Architecture March 3, 2022

Louis Kahn: The Importance of Drawing

Michael Merrill

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
“The importance of a drawing is immense, because it’s the architect’s language,” said the architect Louis Kahn to his masterclass in 1967. While most studies of Kahn focus on his …
Architecture February 23, 2022

Follies in America

A History of Garden and Park Architecture

Kerry Dean Carso

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Follies in America: A History of Garden and Park Architecture (Cornell UP, 2021) examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the nation's founding through the American centennial celebration in …
Architecture February 17, 2022

Form and Flow

The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice

Kian Goh

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Cities around the world are formulating plans to respond to climate change and adapt to its impact. Often, marginalized urban residents resist these plans, offering “counterplans” to protest unjust and …
Architecture February 9, 2022

Beautiful Light

An Insider’s Guide to LED Lighting in Homes and Gardens

Randall Whitehead and Clifton Stanley Lemon

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Beautiful Light: An Insider’s Guide to LED Lighting in Homes and Gardens (Routledge, 2021) by internationally acclaimed lighting designer Randall Whitehead and lighting industry expert and educator Clifton Stanley Lemon is …
Architecture January 28, 2022

The Architecture of Madness

Insane Asylums in the United States

Carla Yanni

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Elaborately conceived, grandly constructed insane asylums—ranging in appearance from classical temples to Gothic castles—were once a common sight looming on the outskirts of American towns and cities. Many of these …
Architecture January 18, 2022

Savage Mind to Savage Machine

Racial Science and Twentieth-Century Design

Ginger Nolan

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Attempting to derive aesthetic systems from natural structures of human cognition, designers looked toward the “savage mind”—a way of thinking they associated with a racialized subaltern. In Savage Mind to …
Architecture January 11, 2022

The Architecture Concept Book

James Tait

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Inspired by the complexity and heterogeneity of the world around us, and by the rise of new technologies and their associated behavior, The Architecture Concept Book (Thames and Hudson, 2018) …
Architecture January 7, 2022

Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance

The Varieties of Architectural Experience

David Karmon

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance: The Varieties of Architectural Experience (Cambridge UP, 2021) is the first study of Renaissance architecture as an immersive, multisensory experience that combines …