Philip Tidwell

Philip Tidwell is a registered architect in Finland and director of Peripheral Projects. He has practiced professionally in the offices of Juhani Pallasmaa, Agrest & Gandelsonas, and Perkins Eastman. As a designer and educator, Philip focuses on wood construction and emerging technologies in timber. His teaching and research examine the relationships among architectural form, constructive technique, and the agency of matter. For more than a decade, he served as studio coordinator for the Wood Program at Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2021 to 2023 he was an assistant professor of architecture at McGill University and he has served as a visiting professor at the Universities of Florida, Massachusetts, and Arkansas.

Together with Kristo Vesikansa and Laura Berger, Philip was curator of the Pavilion of Finland for the 2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture. The exhibition and book, New Standards, examines the industrialization of the wood industry in Finland during and after the Second World War. Philip’s research has been supported by grants and fellowships from numerous organizations including the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the U.S. Fulbright program, and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. His work and teaching have been recognized by The Architectural Review and the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, among others.

Selected Publications

“The Matter of Building: Educating Architecture as a Material Practice,” in Touch Wood: Material, Architecture, Future, edited by Ferrer, Hildebrand and Cañavate, 2023.

New Standards: Timber Houses Ltd. 1940-1955 (with Kristo Vesikansa & Laura Berger), 2021.

Garden [City] State: A Speculative Atlas (with Mario Gandelsonas), 2013.

“Place, Memory and the Problem of the Architectural Image,” in Archipelago: Essays on Architecture, edited by Peter MacKeith, 2006.