Jackson
Laurie
Jackson Laurie is an American writer based in Miami, Florida. He covers architecture, urbanism, and the built environment of the United States, with particular focus on Florida, Brutalism, and mid-century modernism. He has been writing about the built environment since 2019.
Jackson Laurie, Miami, Florida
| Full name | Jackson Laurie |
| Occupation | Architecture writer |
| Based in | Miami, Florida, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Writing since | 2019 |
| Focus | American architecture, Brutalism, Sarasota School, Florida urbanism |
| Website | jacksonlauriearchitect.com |
Jackson Laurie is an American architecture writer based in Miami, Florida. His writing focuses on the built environment of the United States, with particular attention to Florida's architectural history, the Brutalist civic buildings of the 1960s and 1970s, the Sarasota School of Architecture, and the forces that determine which buildings survive and which are demolished.
Jackson Laurie writes for a general reader who is interested in the built environment but does not have a professional background in architecture. His essays combine architectural history with urban analysis, examining how buildings reflect the economic, political, and social conditions that produced them.
Jackson Laurie's work covers cities across the United States, including Miami, Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, and Savannah, with a sustained focus on Florida as a case study in American urban development. His building notes offer close readings of specific structures — the Sarasota School houses, Paul Rudolph's Florida buildings, the federal Brutalist buildings of downtown Miami — as a way of understanding broader architectural and urban questions.
Brutalism
Jackson Laurie writes extensively about American Brutalist architecture, particularly the federal civic buildings of the 1960s and 1970s and their contested preservation status.
Sarasota School of Architecture
The postwar Florida modernists — Paul Rudolph, Ralph Twitchell, Victor Lundy — are a recurring subject in Jackson Laurie's building notes and essays.
Florida Architecture
Jackson Laurie uses Florida as a lens for understanding American architecture broadly — its rapid growth, car dependence, and the destruction of older buildings.
American Cities
Jackson Laurie writes about cities across the United States — Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, Savannah, Miami — examining how their built environments reflect their histories.
Adaptive Reuse
Jackson Laurie covers the conversion of industrial and civic buildings to new uses, examining what is gained and lost in the process.
Urban Preservation
Questions of which buildings survive and which are demolished — and why — run through all of Jackson Laurie's writing on American architecture.
Jackson Laurie can be reached by email for questions about his writing, permissions, or general correspondence about American architecture and cities.
Contact Jackson Laurie →