Bill Pechet & Leslie Van Duzer
updn: 88 Spins with Bill Pechet
Join us for an evening of conversation between Leslie Van Duzer and Bill Pechet, author and subject of the new monograph, updn: 88 Spins with Bill Pechet, moderated by former CBC radio host and author, Bill Richardson.
Books will be for sale & signing courtesy of Peter Miller Books.
Happy hour bar and free snacks available.
Location: LMN's The Shop, 723 1st Ave Seattle, WA
Doors open 5:00 PM
Program starts: 5:30 PM
updn: 88 Spins
As a designer and artist, teacher and mentor of nascent architects and landscape architects, collaborator and friend, Bill Pechet has been a shaper of cities, most particularly of Vancouver where he has lived and practiced for more than forty years. His vast, varied production includes illustrated children’s books, street furniture, urban lighting systems, set and costume designs for dance and theatre, cemetery designs, residences, and many public art pieces both monumental and intimate. Whether a wind-rocked, shade-dappled memorial garden for babies, or a traffic-stopping, beaker-shaped installation emitting mist and radiance in a library plaza, a house set on an exquisite lot among the sculpted Garry oaks of Victoria, or an eye-popping series of painted bunny-men in a dizzying array of multiples, all his projects shine with the hallmarks of his vision—a sensitivity to environment, a gentle irony, an inexhaustible wellspring of originality.
This beguiling testament to his cabinet of curiosity consciousness has been assembled and annotated with great insight, attention and good humour by Leslie Van Duzer. up dn is wonderfully complemented by contributions from renowned photographers Michael Perlmutter and Greg Girard, and by drawings and renderings from the PECHET Studio. As well, insightful, detailed essays and interviews contributed by Bill Pechet’s colleagues and friends speak to his humanity and his work as a beloved teacher.
From the brain to the drawing board to the fabricator to the world: herein reside 88 proposals for rendering ideas material. 88: the number of known constellations, the atomic number of radium, the number of days in the orbital period of the planet Mercury, the number of keys in a piano. Kabbalists, numerologists, and figure-fired fetishists who revel in parsing such well-known gatherings will find in these pages much that’s new to delight and engage them. So too will anyone who cares to be challenged and charmed by one of Canada’s most original and idiosyncratic artists.
Welcome to up dn, a harmonic convergence of octaves and planets and philosopher's stones. Welcome to the 89th constellation.
BILL PECHET holds dual degrees in Geography and Visual Arts from the University of Victoria, BC and a professional degree in Architecture from the University of British Columbia School of Architecture. He has been a faculty member at the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture since 2000 and is a frequent lecturer on issues of the urban built environment and the critical role that public space can play in the development of healthy and vibrant cities. In 2018, Bill won the Carter Wosk Award, the highest award in the province, for his creative achievements in local, national, and international milieus.
In addition to his role as teacher and lecturer, Bill is the director of PECHET Studio.From his mezzanine in Mount Pleasant, Vancouver, his polymath approach to practice and teaching has inspired a generation of places and students.
LESLIE VAN DUZER. After completing her graduate studies in architecture at the University of California Berkeley and practicing in San Francisco with SMWM and Vienna with Hermann Czech, Leslie began her academic career. For 36 years, she has taught at numerous schools in the United States (University of Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, California at Berkeley, Washington University and Arizona State University); Europe (Technical University of Vienna, Prague and Helsinki, the Aarhus School of Architecture); Japan (Hosei University); and Canada (University of British Columbia). She moved to Vancouver to serve as the Director of the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in 2010, and currently teaches undergraduate and graduate students in design studios, theory courses and a university-wide course on design thinking. Leslie recently became a Canadian citizen and enjoys splitting her time between Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast.
Leslie has published seven books, her most recent being updn: 88 Spins with Bill Pechet (ORO Editions, 2025). Her early monographs with Kent Kleinman on Adolf Loos’s Villa Müller and Mies van der Rohe’s Krefeld Villas each garnered The Architects’ Journal “Top Ten Books of the Year” award. In 2014, Leslie published House Shumiatcher, the first in a series of building monographs, each written by a different author. She initiated the series in response to widespread alarm over Vancouver’s rapidly disappearing architectural heritage. The series, West Coast Modern Houses, closed in 2020 with the publication of the eighth book. A year later, Leslie sole-authored Almost, Not: The Architecture of Atelier Nishikata, an architectural monograph about a remarkable, little-known practice in Tokyo.
As the sister of a magician and a former magician’s assistance, Leslie has a longstanding interest in magic and its relationship to architecture. She is currently working on a Dictionary of Deception, a collection of trickster terminology from disciplines ranging from zoology to linguistics, stage magic to spy craft.
BILL RICHARDSON is a writer and broadcaster. For many years he produced and hosted interview and music programs for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Among his more than 20 books are four that were collaborations with Bill Pechet, most recently a children's picture book, My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean. He lives in Vancouver, B. C.
PECHET STUDIO
The PECHET Studio is based in Vancouver, Canada. With a combined interest in art, architecture, landscape, and urban infrastructure the studio has created public art works, cemeteries and memorials, playgrounds, plazas, urban lighting, street furnishings, houses, commercial interiors, exhibitions, stage sets, and illustrations for print media.
For every project the studio seeks to heighten the sensorial, spatial, social, choreographic, and ritualistic potentials of given situations to reinforce spaces and places with layers of refreshing experiences that are specific to each context.
The studio projects have been represented in national and international exhibitions, publications, performances, and lectures across Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. The studio has received awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the American and Canadian Societies of Landscape Architecture, the Province of British Columbia, and the Architecture Institute of British Columbia. In 2006, under the banner of Pechet and Robb Art and Architecture, the studio represented Canada at the 10th Venice Biennale in Architecture with the SweaterLodge project. In 2025, the studio was awarded the top prize from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the ‘Children’s Picture Book’ category for My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean (Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides, Pub.), as well as shortlisted for best prize in illustrations by the same association.
Also, in the fall of 2025, a monograph on the studio, called updn: 88 Spins With Bill Pechet, written by Leslie Van Duzer, was published by ORO Editions