Former UTA faculty member reflects on Pulitzer win
Mark Lamster, a former architecture faculty member at The University of Texas at Arlington, has spent more than a decade writing about the buildings, streets and civic spaces that shape life in Dallas and North Texas. He recently earned the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, the highest honor in American journalism.
The Dallas Morning News architecture critic won for a series of seven columns about downtown Dallas that sparked public debate centered on the threatened demolition of Dallas City Hall, I.M. Pei's iconic example of brutalist architecture.
Pulitzer judges praised Lamster for his rigorous and passionate criticism, noting his ability to use wit and expertise to advocate for everyday city residents. It is the 10th Pulitzer Prize in the newspaper's 140-year history and the second consecutive year an architecture critic has won the award.
We sat down with Lamster, a former associate professor in practice of architecture at UTA who later became a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, to talk about winning the Pulitzer, his time at UT Arlington and what comes next.
How does it feel to have won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for criticism? Were you surprised or did you feel confident going in?
Pretty great, honestly. I was confident in the work that I submitted but was still quite pleasantly shocked. It's like winning the lottery.
You joined The Dallas Morning News in 2013 through a joint appointment with UTA. How did that relationship shape your approach to architecture criticism?
I'm not sure it shaped my criticism, but for a time, it allowed me to do it for a living, and I remain grateful for that opportunity.
What did your time teaching at UTA teach you about how the next generation of architects thinks about cities?
It's encouraging to see how much students believe that their work, and architecture generally, can shape the way we live. I think the recent student proposal to rethink the area around Dallas City Hall was especially smart.
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Your Pulitzer-winning series focused on downtown Dallas, particularly the future of Dallas City Hall. Why did that building become such a focal point?
For many reasons. We can start with the fact that Dallas has a terrible record of caring for its architecture and infrastructure. City Hall was systematically neglected, just as is Fair Park, the Kalita Humphreys Theater, the city's streets—one could go on and on. Dallas City Hall, designed by renowned architect I.M. Pei, is considered one of the most significant works of brutalist architecture in the American Southwest.
Architecture critics have won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism two years in a row, with Alexandra Lange winning in 2025 for her work at Bloomberg CityLab. What does that say about the public's appetite for this kind of writing?
I'd like to think it shows just how important architectural issues are to the way people live their lives every day. I hope it will encourage more publications to think about including architecture criticism in their plans going forward.
Your forthcoming book, “Welcome to Paradox City,” draws on your news reporting. How does writing a book differ from writing for a newspaper?
The pleasure of a book is that you are unconstrained by space and, really, by any boundaries except your own mind. The ability to tell longer, more complex stories is really appealing—of course, so is the fast pace and format of a news column. It's great to be able to do both.
(“Welcome to Paradox City,” which explores the most significant buildings in Dallas, is due out Aug. 4 through Deep Vellum Publishing. It follows Lamster's acclaimed 2018 biography of architect Philip Johnson, “The Man in the Glass House.”)
For students interested in careers at the intersection of architecture and journalism, what advice would you give?
Find something to be an expert at, no matter how small, and just be relentless in your work.
What's next for you after such an important moment in your career?
I'm just gonna walk the dog and get back at it in the morning.