Randall Kober
Randall Kober has been educated as an architect, carpenter, and historian. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1995 with a Master of Architecture degree. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree granted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986 with a major in history. Between degrees Kober spent six years working with wood as a rough and finish carpenter, furniture and cabinetmaker in the USA and Germany. He has hands-on experience with contemporary and historical light framing and heavy timber building practices as well as with many other materials. His architectural education is indebted to Douglas Garofalo with whom he studied and practiced over a span of twelve years in Chicago. Together they designed and occasionally personally built extremely contemporary nationally and internationally published work.
Randall Kober is founding faculty at the McEwen School of Architecture. The school has design/build of wooden buildings as one of its foundations. Over the past five years he has taught incoming undergraduate students wood design/build skills through the creation of small structures occupied on Northern Ontario's frozen lakes. He has developed Structures 1: Wood as an introductory materials and methods course based on the values, static principles, and construction practices of the Native, French, and English cultures of the region. He has lectured internationally on this innovative hands-on course where students explore wood's potential by building 1:1 wooden structures. Over the last four springs he has lead design/build projects with Laurentian students within the medieval heavy timber building fabric of Dinkelsbühl, Germany. He has also taught in Chicago, Rome, and Paris for University of Illinois at Chicago, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Archeworks.
He maintains anarchitectures, a collaborative practice exploring the space between art, architecture, and construction in Dinkelsbühl. HIs project at Kapuzinerweg 9 in Dinkelsbühl was given an historic preservation award by the government of Middle Franconia in March of 2017. Kober is Architecture Academia Advisor to the Board of the Canadian Wood Council and serves on the Editorial Board of Wood Design & Building magazine.