Phillip Mack Caldwell was born in 1942 in the United States, attending Burges High School, in El Paso, Texas, before studying at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Following his graduation in 1964, he moved to Yale University where he completed a Master of Arts in Architecture in 1969. In 1970 he travelled to the UK where he enrolled on the postgraduate programme run by the Architectural Association’s (AA) Department of Development and Tropical Studies, in London. Tutored by Mario Novella, Caldwell was awarded the AA’s postgraduate Diploma in 1971. He returned to Texas and from 1974-75 was the president of the Architects Design Group, in El Paso, prior to establishing his own practice, ‘Mack Caldwell Architect’ in 1976. He re-entered academia in 1981, earning a Diploma from the Louisiana Universidad Autonoma de Cd. Juarez, in Mexico and subsequently became President of a firm called ‘Adobe Builders’. Caldwell’s works and research interests developed within the field of adobe buildings and solar design, winning the Solar Design Award from the Solar Energy Research Institute in 1978.  In 1983, he won the Outstanding Architecture Design award from the Texas Society Architects and the following year was responsible for renovating the historic Peter and Margaret De Wetter Center on the UTEP campus. Phillip subsequently served as an Associate Professor at the College of Architecture, University of Oklahoma, from 1990 to 2008 and became Emeritus Professor from 2019. An exceptional educationalist, he was voted Most Outstanding Architecture Faculty Member for two years in a  row (1998-1999) by the University Student Association. 

Sources:

• Architectural Association Student Register, 1970-71. AA Archives.
• Architectural Association Membership Register, 1974. AA Archives.
• ‘Texas Solar Incentives’, Texas Architect, March/April, 1980, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp32-33.
• McCullar, M. ‘Solar Adobe in El Paso’, Texas Architect, Jan/Feb, 1981, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp32-34.
• University of Oklahoma College of Architecture, Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1999, pp12-13, 36-57