Richard Saul Wurman: Architect of Ideas

RICHARD SAUL WURMAN created and chaired the TED conference from 1984 thru 2002 and the TEDMED conference from 1995 to 2010.

He has written, designed, and published 90 books on wildly divergent topics. Two of these are the notebooks and drawings of architect Louis I. Kahn (1963) and What Will Be Has Always Been (1986), a seminal collection of Kahn’s words. Wurman chaired the IDCA Conference in 1972, the First Federal Design assembly in 1973, and the annual AIA Conference in 1976.

Wurman received both his masters and bachelor in architecture degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, from which he received the Penn Alumni 2014 Spirit Award, and the Arthur Spayed Brooks Gold Medal. He has been awarded several honorary doctorates, Graham Fellowships, a Guggenheim and numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as being the Distinguished Professor of the Practice at Northeastern University. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian, Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Wurman has also been awarded the Annual Gold Medal in Discourse from Trinity College, Dublin, the James Joyce Award Literary and Historical Society at the University College Dublin, a Gold Medal from AIGA and Boston Science Museum’s 50th Annual Bradford Washburn Award. He received the Winner of the Best Guide Book Award from London Tourist Board and Convention Bureau in 1987. He is also a Fellow of the AIA and in the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame. Wurman received the Ladislav Sutnar prize for his outstanding performance in the field of fine arts, as well as accepting an invitation to contribute to Genius: 100 Visions of the Future, a project sponsored by the Einstein Legacy Project, which features essays submitted by the 100 greatest innovators, artists, scientists and visionaries of our time. Most recently he was awarded the 2019 Star Award from the IIDA (The Commercial Interior Design Association) in recognition and in celebration of his impact to the field of Interior Design.

His current projects include Urban Observatory, UnderstandingUnderstanding– a journey through the myriad ways that he and his many muses have created their own idiosyncratic manners of understanding, and his latest book entitled Mortality.

Wurman lives in Golden Beach, FL with his wife, novelist Gloria Nagy.

The videos below were recorded via Zoom, are organized by Success Factor, and run between 30 seconds and 10 minutes. Click on any video. You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.