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DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

My architecture works out of traditional style, incrementally developing the vocabulary, to produce a subtle originality.

It forms an investigation into how we might build in this age of modernity.

The past provides a great store of human wisdom and this informs my working method.

The grounding for this architecture is in our innate sense of beauty that remains a permanent link to the humanism we all share

My approach to designing architectural form uses principles of traditional architecture that I have discovered during many years of practice and research.

These principles reveal that traditional styles gain their beauty and their authority through a dialogue between human-made pure architectural form and the forms created by nature.

This is a reflection of the dual character of humans, as being both of nature and of culture.

 


This dialogue occurs in all traditional architecture although it is played out differently according to style, epoch and individual expression.

It forms the foundation of my aesthetic approach in whatever style I am working out of: Classical, Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, Engineering, Monumental, Gothic, Arab, Eclectic, Modern Regionalist or Free Style.

It enables me to penetrate the essense of each style and develop it authentically for the current project.

The object is not to resolve the dialogue between the human and the natural but to participate in it as an ongoing process.

Each building evolves according to what is uniquely appropriate to the site and the project.

I never forget that great buildings are not the product of a good architect, but of the combination of a good architect and a good client working together.

I work personally with the client to evolve the design and planning. I work alongside expert colleagues for the detailed execution. There are no limits, of building type or geographical location, secular or religious, on what I undertake.

   


ARTICLES AND TALKS

I write regularly for the New York magazine American Arts Quarterly:

Ruskin, Venice and the Fulcrum of European Architecture (to be published Spring 2014)

 

 

 





Other articles include

The New Modern Palladians
(TAG. 2010)

The Discreet Charm of Pluralism (TAG. 2010)

Architecture, God and Nature (Talk Stockholm University. 2009)

The Ideology of Architecture (INTBAU. 2006)

BOOKS

Transylvanian Encounter (PK. 2008)

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