Bill Keene: Seeing Buildings Anew

If you attend one of Bill’s popular lectures at Oasis or the Smithsonian, you’ll quickly realize you are in the company of someone who has spent a lifetime chasing curiosity, especially about architecture.

Though he never formally became an architect, Bill’s fascination with buildings began early. “I was six or seven years old when I knew I wanted to be an architect,” he recalls. That childhood spark carried him through high school drafting classes and eventually into college, where he explored city planning before switching his focus to history and political science.

While he discovered that city planning involved more regulatory writing than creative design, Bill’s love for the built environment never left him. In fact, it evolved. After a career in the energy sector, he began giving lectures for the Smithsonian in 2010. From there, his repertoire grew, first touching on infrastructure, and then expanding into tours and talks on Frank Lloyd Wright, brutalist design, and most recently, the rise of the skyscraper.

“The fascination with skyscrapers is really part of a broader interest in architecture,” Bill says. His teaching approach goes beyond structures and blueprints. He encourages his audiences to understand architecture as a reflection of society. “The main takeaway is to interpret buildings as responses to questions (such as) what the architect was trying to solve or express, and how those solutions reflect the time in which they were built.”

Asked what continues to drive him, Bill’s answer is simple: the joy of discovery and the chance to share it. Whether he’s guiding a tour or sparking insight through a screen, he invites participants not just to look at buildings, but to see them.

You can catch Bill’s upcoming talk, The Rise of the Skyscraper, on August 12.