In this interview, Alberto Pérez-Gómez reflected on a career spanning numerous institutions. He began studying architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City. After briefly undertaking graduate work at Cornell, he moved to the University of Essex, where he found a decisive intellectual direction. He subsequently taught at the Architectural Association, Toronto, Syracuse, Houston, Carleton, and McGill.
Pérez-Gómez recalled how contrasting pedagogical cultures defined different schools and could determine a teacher’s career. At Syracuse, Werner Seligmann’s formalist pedagogy, rooted in the legacy of Colin Rowe, John Hejduk, and Robert Slutzky, left little place for Pérez-Gómez’s approach, and he was asked to leave. A few years later, at thirty-three, he became director at Carleton after being nominated by students and colleagues who had admired his teaching in Toronto. His pedagogy, developed over decades and most fully realized at McGill, draws on hermeneutics and phenomenology. For Pérez-Gómez, architectural education extends beyond technical competence to cultivate meaning through dialogue, an approach he credited with shaping McGill graduates who pursued significant academic careers.