Albert Pope is the Gus Sessions Wortham Professor of Architecture at Rice University. His design work has received numerous awards including national and regional awards by the American Institute of Architects. He is the author of the book-length study of the postwar American City, Ladders (Princeton Architectural Press, 2015) and Inverse Utopia (Birkhauser, 2024). Pope has written and lectured extensively on the broad implications of climate disruption in light of the extraordinary demands soon to be placed on the built environment. He is the director of Present Future, a think-tank for urban design based in Houston Texas.