Source: Peter Magyar, 785-532-5953, pmagyar@k-state.edu
Photo available. Contact media@k-state.edu or 785-532-2535.
News release prepared by: Beth Bohn, 785-532-2535, bbohn@k-state.edu

Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010

MAGYAR NAMED MEMBER OF ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS, RELEASES NEW BOOK

MANHATTAN -- It's said that good things come in threes, but for Kansas State University's Peter Magyar, good things have been coming in bunches.

Magyar, professor and head of Kansas State University's department of architecture, is having a year filled with special honors.

The honors include being elected a chartered member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Membership in the institute is recognized as a symbol of professional excellence, with chartered architects considered to have reached the gold standard in their profession.

The institute, which was founded in 1824, is a global network of individuals and practitioners who share a common interest in architecture and the built environment.

Magyar also recently released his latest book, "THINKINK," published by Kendall Hunt. The book is about his passion, the process of conceiving and refining designs through freehand drawing, or spaceprints. The book features several examples of his work.

Teaching and enticing architecture students to draw is one of Magyar's priorities. Drawings, he says, are a way to illustrate the transformation of the spirit of an idea to matter. Spaceprints are a way to simultaneously investigate, analyze, explore and articulate solid and void, or matter and space.

"We aspire for the highest art of craft by learning the craft of art," Magyar said. "Drawings are the first physical embodiments of thoughts, and therefore no drawing should exist without this duality present: the ability to be realized and the containment of thoughts."

Magyar calls drawing a nonverbal form of communication like music.

"I think you can define issues with drawings more appropriately than talking about them," he said.

Magyar also is the author of "Spaceprints," "....scattered instances of structure and time..." and "Construction Meditative," all a collection of monographs published by the Auburn University Press in the late 1980s; and "Thought Palaces," published by Architectura & Natura Press in 1999. He is currently working on his next book, "Studies in Architectural Morphogenesis."

On the heels of the release of "THINKINK," Magyar was selected to give the opening address at the Hungarian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in August. He also has been appointed as an adviser to the graduate program of the Dessau Institute of Architecture at The Bauhaus in Germany. And he was recently inducted into the Great Minds of the 21st Century Hall of Fame, a reference directory.

Magyar joined K-State in 2007 after teaching at Florida Atlantic University in Fort Lauderdale, where he was the founding director of the School of Architecture. He also served as the head of the department of architecture at Pennsylvania State University. Magyar, a registered chief architect in Europe, earned a master's in architecture and urban design and a doctorate in architecture, both from the Technical University of Budapest in Hungary.