David Bell is an associate professor and faculty member of Rensselaer’s School of Architecture since 1980. He holds an M.Arch. degree from the University of Virginia, where he had also been in the Ph.D. program in physics before taking up the study of architecture. He has taught architectural design studio and a variety of courses in the history and theory of architecture at every level in Rensselaer’s undergraduate and graduate programs. His writings on the history and theory of architecture have been published in a variety of national and international journals. His most recent articles are “The Irritation of Architecture” in the Spring 2011 issue of the Journal of Architectural Education and “The Panoptic Garden”, which will appear in the book EARTH PERFECT? Nature, Utopia, and the Garden to be published by Black Dog Publications in spring 2012. Professor Bell is currently writing a series of books regarding the formative importance of constraints in the architectural creative process. The first three of these books will appear in 2012. Their titles are Bernini and Borromini: Theater & Heresy, Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia: Knowledge & the Middle Landscape, and Adolf Loos: The Irritation of Modernity.