Wendell Burnette, FAIA x DWR

Wendell Burnette is a self-taught architect and founder of the internationally recognized practice Wendell Burnette Architects (WBA), based in Phoenix since 1996. Originally from Nashville, he discovered the Southwest desert as an apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West and later spent eleven years with Will Bruder, culminating in a six-year design collaboration as co-designer, project, and field architect for the Burton Barr Central Library in Phoenix – recipient of the AIA Twenty-five Year Award. WBA’s award-winning projects - spanning residences, public libraries, museums, adaptive reuse, preservation, and hospitality including the acclaimed Amangiri Resort - explores the relationship between space, light, context, and community. Burnette has lectured widely in the U.S. and abroad and has held numerous academic appointments, including fifteen years as Professor of Practice at Arizona State University and recently as a distinguished Option Studio Visiting Critic for the Earth Curvature Studio at the Harvard GSD.

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