In this interview, David Theodore discussed his intellectual path into architecture. He grew up in a small Manitoba town shaped by seventeen churches and a rural work ethic. After attending boarding schools in Winnipeg, where music and basketball interested him more than academics, he left formal education as a teenager before returning to university. At McGill, he studied English literature with Michael Bristol and wrote an honors thesis on John Donne through Michel Foucault’s concept of the author function. He also observed poststructuralism and deconstruction moving from literary studies into architecture.
Theodore then studied architecture at McGill and worked with Annmarie Adams on Canadian hospital design and modernization. Collaboration with medical historians and scientists led him toward science and technology studies and doctoral research at Harvard with Peter Galison and Antoine Picon. He also studied with Alberto Pérez-Gómez while developing a critical view of his approach. Theodore’s essay “The Content and Craft: What Do We Do When We Do the History of Architecture?” reflects his emphasis on methodological precision, careful use of sources, and skepticism toward universalizing claims in architectural history.