Ledbetter, Architect 129 Church Street, #814 New Haven, Connecticut 06510 Phone +1-203-782 1912 Fax +1-203-782 1952 bl (at) benledbetter.com www.benledbetter.com Established 1976  Owner Ben Ledbetter Employees 2-9 (Varies with work) Specialties Circular Ruins Spheres in the Form of Animals Houses for Minotaurs Swedenborgian Sepulchres Banks for Financiers who read Ovid Squonk Sacks Chimerical Space Planning* Things That Might Have Been *(as posed by Rabelais's famous question: "Can a chimera, swinging in the void, swallow second intentions?")
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Ledbetter Architect
Wanting to make anything in this world, of this world, is a dizzying aspiration. To make buildings is to reconcile oneself unapologetically and irrevocably to a world of things.
Architecture is the primordial intersection of human presence, embodied and ideated, with things.
As an ideal, the forms a work of architecture may take are limited only by the architect's perceptions of this intersection. However it is very difficult to devise an unconstrained approach to this ideal within the present realities of making buildings. Considering this problem, I believe it is first necessary to construct in concert with a client a grid by which to measure both need and desire. As its purpose is to question rather than assume truths, I believe this can no longer be a classical grid. It must be Foucault's grid: a fisherman's net thrown over reality in lieu of an a priori matrix of rules, typologies or styles into which many architects contend reality fits. (A glance at any morning's newspaper will remind us that such a notion is quite preposterous.)
The qualities of architecture that I think can be achieved in this way are admittedly hard to name. They perpetually define themselves, yet they can never be defined. Not relying on any of the aforementioned conceits, said qualities are caught coming and going, as it were. Architectural value forever recedes, existing only as a vector. And aspiration becomes an arrow never better aimed than in the wistful musing offered up years ago by my great teacher Stanley Tigerman:
"Life is fabulous – if only architecture could be more like it!"
 Selected Publications, Lectures, Symposia
The Planet on the Table, an architectural autobiography / pedagogical workbook; book in progress
"The House at the End of the Day", The Harvard Architecture Review #12 (Not yet published)
The House at the End of the Day. An architectural adumbration of Eugene O'Neill's play, Long Day's Journey Into Night. This forthcoming book is a biography – in drawings, photographs, paintings, and texts – of O'Neill's boyhood home in New London, CT, following O'Neill's script , records of performances, and Sidney Lumet's film. (Excerpt selected for forthcoming issue of The Harvard Architecture Review - see above). Documentation of O'Neill's New London house was supported by a grant from Wesleyan University
Lecture, ARCHEWORKS, Chicago, "Listening to Tigerman at Harvard and Poe in the Bronx", 1998
"reFORMING SOCIAL SPACE: A Call for Public Works. (Review of First Place Entry in International Competition sponsored by UCLA), SURFACE JOURNAL (LOS ANGELES), Volume 1, 1996
Lecture, "Why am I doing this?", SCIARrc (Southern California Institute of Architecture), Los Angeles, 1995
Lecturer and Panelist, "Unplanning: Three Perspectives On Revealing The Invisible Space Of The City", sponsored by the Yale University chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects, Yale School of Architecture, 1995
Respondent and Panelist, "Architecture and the Needs of the City: Stanley Tigerman and Eva Maddox Discuss ARCHEWORKS", Boston Architectural Center, 1995
"Doing Goes Along The Earth", Book Review of Douglas Darden's Condemned Building for The Harvard University Graduate School of Design News, Fall 1993
"Young American Architects", Ottagono, (Milano, Italy), Fall, 1987
Investigations In Architecture: Eisenman Studios at the Graduate School of Design: 1983-85, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 18-19. Academic work selected for publication in retrospective of work from Peter Eisenman's studios at Harvard
"Consciousness, Temporality, and Possibility," Oz, The Journal of the College of Architecture and Design, Kansas State University, Volume 7, Spring 1985
''Design Studios and Studio Projects'': Co-moderator for symposium at the ACSA (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC., April 1991
Coordinator and Moderator for Tulane University's "Architects Week Forum", 1986 and 1987
New York Correspondent, Transformations: Bulletin de la Societe Francaise des Architectes, Paris
Selected Honors, Awards, and Exhibitions
"Wall and Moonshine: A Jig (Videlicet)", a painting installation for the exhibition On The Wall, Untitled(Space)Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut 2001
"The Harbor of the Red Mountains", exhibition of Ben Ledbetter's photographs at the New Haven Colony Historical Society, 1999
ARCHITECTURE FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM, exhibition sponsored by Yale University and BKM / Steelcase, School of Art and Architecture Gallery, Yale University, 1997
Ledbetter, Architect Retrospective, School of Art and Architecture Gallery, Yale University, 1996
First Prize. RE-FORMING SOCIAL SPACE. International Competition for Architects and Urbanists, sponsored by the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California at Los Angeles, 1995
Honorable Mention, "Public Space in the New American City: Atlanta 1996: An International Design Competition"
"The New England Holocaust Memorial Competition: An American Process". Entry to The New England Holocaust Memorial Competition selected for exhibitions at the Bank of Boston Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, and at Harvard University, 1993
First Award, Connecticut Society of Architects / American Institute of Architects Architectural Drawing Award, 1991
RESISTANT, exhibition sponsored by the Kansas Architectural Club. At Kansas State University, 1990. Project: "Bethany Trailer Park", Bethany, Connecticut
First Award, Connecticut Society of Architects / American Institute of Architects Unbuilt Projects Awards, for phase two of the State Cinema Project, Stamford, Connecticut, 1990
Winner, The Young Architects Forum 1985, the Architectural League of New York City, 1985, for "The National Bank of Commerce, Corinth, Mississippi"
Appointed by Harvard University to Design Team for the 1992 Chicago World's Fair, 1983
Representative Projects
Recent Projects
Private Residence, New Haven, Connecticut, 2002
Martin Residence, New Haven, Connecticut, 2002
Private Residence, Hamden, Connecticut, 1998-2000
Memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., National Competition, Washington, DC, 2000
Addition to the Blossman House, Ocean Springs, Mississippi, 1998-99
Cedar Hill Blockwatch Association Offices and Police Substation, New Haven, Connecticut, 1996
Cedar Hill Community Center, Study for the Cedar Hill Merchants' Association, New Haven, Connecticut, 1996
Costume Shop, New Haven, Connecticut, 1996
Upholstery Shop, New Haven, Connecticut, 1996
Pawn Shop (and Fortune Teller's Shop), New Haven, Connecticut, 1996
Renovations to the Pentecostal Door of Salvation Church, New Haven, Connecticut, 1995-96
Cedar Hill Master Plan, Study for the City of New Haven Office of Economic Development, New Haven, Connecticut, 1995-96
Facade Retrofit, Malley's Department Store, Mayor's Study for the 1995 Special Olympics, New Haven, Connecticut, 1995
Community Health Clinic Expansion, Meriden, Connecticut, 1994
Community Health Clinic, Master Plan, Middletown, Connecticut, 1993-94
Rehabilitation of the Middletown Armory / Community Center, Study funded by Gerard Weitzman, the City of Middletown, and Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1993
Representative earlier projects
(Ben Ledbetter is architect of record for over forty completed buildings)
the economic survival rite of passage, Production Designer for Opera by Andruid Kerne, Music Department, Wesleyan University, Spring 1993
The Urban Follies National Design Competition, The Urban Design Forum, Denver, Colorado, 1991
National Competition for the New England Holocaust Memorial, Boston, Massachusetts, 1991
Redevelopment and Highway Mask, Bethany Trailer Park, Bethany, Connecticut, 1990
State Cinema Renovation, Stamford, Connecticut, 1987-1989
Planning Model of Middletown, Connecticut, Funded by The City of Middletown, The Rockfall Foundation, and Wesleyan University, 1990
Study for a new Arts and Culture Center for Middletown, Connecticut, for the Middletown Arts and Culture Committee, 1990-92
International Competition for the Diomedes Islands, USA/USSR, Sponsored by Architects, Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility, 1989
"Bearings: Ideas of Contemporary Architectural Educators", Parsons School of Design. Project: "Sanctuary: Ionesco's Rhinoceros in the Streets of Manhattan", 1988
Wright House Addition, Rowayton, Connecticut, 1987
Union Vale Modular Housing Development, Garden Homes Woodland Company, Dutchess County, New York, 1987-88
Memorial For The Students Killed At Kent State (National Competition), Kent State University, 1986
Addition to the Blossman House, Ocean Springs, Mississippi, 1985-86
National Design Competition for a Master Plan for Jacob's Pillow School of Dance, Jacob's Pillow, Massachusetts, 1984
Yoknapatawpha County (Faulkner's) Courthouse, Jefferson, Mississippi (Masters Thesis, Harvard University, 1983-84)
National Competition for an Addition to the New Orleans Museum of Art (Honorable Mention), 1983
Carnegie Auditorium Restoration, Mississippi Industrial College, Holly Springs, Mississippi, 1981-83
Catherine Hall Renovation, Mississippi Industrial College, Holly Springs, Mississippi, 1981-83
Coliseum Theater Restoration and Renovation, Corinth, Mississippi, 1981-83
Perry Dental Clinic, Corinth, Mississippi, 1981-82
Alcorn County Health Department, Corinth, Mississippi, 1981-82
Waukomis Lake Lodge, Alcorn County, Mississippi, 1981-82
Hearn/Jennings Dormitory Restoration, Blue Mountain College, Blue Mountain Mississippi, 1981
Johns Street Community Center, Corinth, Mississippi, 1981
Baldwyn Municipal Building, Baldwyn, Mississippi, 1980-82
Vann & Hedges House, Pickwick, Tennessee, 1980-82
National Bank of Commerce Branch, Corinth, Mississippi, 1980-82
Fidelity Federal Savings and Loan Building, Oxford, Mississippi, 1980
Lambert Elderly Housing (FHA) Project, Burnsville, Mississippi, 1980
Science Building, Mississippi Industrial College, Holly Springs, Mississippi, 1979-83
Blossman House, Ocean Springs, Mississippi, 1979-82
Multi-Learning Center, Mississippi Industrial College, Holly Springs, Mississippi, 1979-82
Parking Garage for the City of Corinth, Corinth, Mississippi, 1979
North Village Shopping Center, Corinth, Mississippi, 1979
Town Library, Rienzi, Mississippi, 1979
Tennessee Valley Regional Housing Authority Office Building, Corinth, Mississippi, 1979
Harris and Harris Apartments, Corinth, Mississippi, 1978
Fine Arts Building, Corinth High School, Corinth, Mississippi, 1978
Vann/Hedges Residence, Pickwick, Tennessee, 1978
Additions and Renovations to Alcorn County Public Schools, Corinth Mississippi, 1977-79
Addition and Renovation, Hillandale Country Club, Corinth, Mississippi, 1976
Taylor Medical Clinic, Corinth, Mississippi, 1976
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