Burdette Keeland

Burdette Keeland, Jr. was a Houston, Texas, architect and professor whose work was admired by Philip Johnson. Predominantly a modernist, Keeland designed several projects from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Keeland was born in 1926 in the town of Mart, Texas, just outside Waco. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and studied at Texas A&M University and the University of Houston, from where he received a bachelor of architecture degree in 1950. He returned to the University of Houston as a faculty member in 1954, but briefly left the university in order to attend Yale and receive a master's degree. Keeland was an architecture professor at the University of Houston for over forty years. He was also a member of the City of Houston's Planning Commission for over 30 years. He married Margaret Scott, a teacher who attended Rice University and The University of Texas at Austin. They had three girls and a boy. His son, Burdette Keeland III, lives in Houston and is a well known contractor.

Keeland died in January 2000. [http://www.stp.uh.edu/vol65/147/news/news3.html] In his memory, the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the University of Houston created the Burdette Keeland Jr Design Exploration Center. [http://www.arch.uh.edu/keelandcenter/learn_more.html]

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