Frank Ching

Frank Ching
Occupation Author, Professor Emeritus
Years active 1972–present

Frank (Francis D. K.) Ching (born 1943) is a widely recognized author of books addressing architectural and design graphics. Ching's books have been widely influential and continue to shape the visual language of all fields of design. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington.

Ching was born and raised in Hawaii. He received his B.Arch. from the University of Notre Dame in 1966. After several years of practice, in 1972 he joined the faculty at Ohio University to teach drawing. To support his lectures in architectural graphics, Ching hand-drew and hand-lettered his lecture notes. These notes were eventually shown to the publisher, Van Nostrand Reinhold, and were published, in 1974, in an edited version as Architectural Graphics, (a book now in its fourth edition). Ching went on to produce twelve other books, including Building Construction Illustrated and Architecture: Form, Space & Order.

Ching's printing has been adopted by Adobe in its Tekton font family.

Ching was, for a time, an architecture faculty member at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. By the late 1980s he had begun teaching at the University of Washington in the Department of Architecture. He became a full Professor in 1991. For the next fifteen years, he routinely taught introductory architecture studios and directed beginning graphics classes. In 2006 Ching retired, though he continued to teach on a part-time basis until 2011. He now holds the rank of Professor Emeritus.

He taught as a visiting faculty member at Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1990 and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1993.

Ching has received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Design from Nottingham Trent University; the S.Y. Chung Visiting Fellowship, New Asia College, Chinese University of Hong Kong; and a Citation for Excellence in International Architecture Book Publishing.

Ching received the Special Jury Commendation in the 2007 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards, and an AIA 2007 Institute Honor Award for Collaborative Achievement.

Books

The following list includes Frank Ching's books published in English; many of his books have been translated into one or more other languages.

External links