Commonplaces: Forty Years of Thinking About an American Architecture

Brian Healy is an architect who works within the modern American tradition. That is to say, he endeavors to engage the tradition of practice as exemplified by architects such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Louis I. Kahn. It takes considerable courage to engage the American tradition of practice today, in a time dominated by an obsessive emphasis on universal “globalization,” and the parallel loss of local place, culture, and identity. Yet, as Paul Ricoeur stated over 40 years ago, while universal civilization is available around the world, and is desired by everyone, anywhere, there is no culture that is not local, that does not belong to a particular place. In his work, Healy endeavors to seek the essence of his discipline, architecture, as defined by its place and time – an American architecture, born of the commonplace and the vernacular, yet at the same time engaging the great works of our modern predecessors. – Robert McCarter

Brian Healy

With more than 30 years of experience in architectural design, Brian oversees the design direction and studio culture of the Boston office. Brian was educated at the Pennsylvania State University and the Yale School of Architecture where he was Editor of Perspecta 19: the Yale Architectural Journal. He has worked with some of the industry’s most renowned design firms including Cesar Pelli & Associates & Richard Meier & Partners. He established his own architectural practice in Boston in 1986 where he compiled a distinguished record of creative activity, community service and professional achievement. The architectural projects produced by his office received 47 national and regional design awards including six within the Progressive Architecture Award Program. He was selected as an Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York and included in Forty under Forty and P/A’s Young Architects. His firm won first place in international design competitions including Chicago’s Initiative to Redefine Public Housing and the Mill Center for the Arts in Hendersonville, North Carolina. His work spans a diverse range of scales and settings.

Marlon Blackwell

Marlon Blackwell (born November 7, 1956) is an American architect and university professor in Arkansas. A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, he has used his distinct and original voice to produce iconic, award-winning designs across typologies, scales, and budgets. His critically resolute “glocal” approach merges the universal language of architecture and the particulars of place, resulting in a distinguished body of work found outside the centers of fashion.

He is founder and principal at Marlon Blackwell Architects, a design firm established in 1992 in Fayetteville, which has received more than 150 domestic and international awards, including 14 national AIA Honor Awards. Despite working where architecture is unexpected and often unappreciated, his firm has created beloved buildings across a wide variety of project types yet deliberately focused on projects that foster the public good, most notably in education, healthcare, and recreation

Robert McCarter

Robert McCarter is a practicing architect, professor of architecture, and author. He is the Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. From 1991-2007, he was professor of architecture, and for ten years he was director of the School of Architecture, both at the University of Florida. From 1986-1991, he was associate professor and assistant dean at the Graduate School of Architecture, Columbia University, New York. He was visiting critic at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam; he was appointed as the Frederic Lindley Morgan Distinguished Professor of Architectural Design at the University of Louisville; he has taught as visiting studio critic at North Carolina State University; and he has been appointed as a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome on three occasions. During his 33 years in academia, including 17 years in leadership roles at three institutions, McCarter has taught at least one design studio every semester, and he has taught more than 1,800 students. He coordinated the architecture lecture series at Columbia University (1986-1991), University of Florida (1991-2005), and Washington University in St. Louis (2007-2012). He invited Wang Shu to lecture in February 2012, the lecture taking place only two days after Wang was announced as the 2012 Pritzker Prize winner; "Someone at Washington University in St. Louis just hit the lecture jackpot," is the way Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune described this event.

Oscar Riera Ojeda

RIERA OJEDA, OSCAR is an editor and designer based in the US, China, and Argentina. Born in 1966, in Buenos Aires, he moved to the United States in 1990. Since then he has published over two hundred books, assembling a remarkable body of work notable for its thoroughness of content, timeless character, and sophisticated and innovative craftsmanship. Oscar Riera Ojeda’s books

have been published by many prestigious publishing houses across the world, including Birkhäuser, Byggförlaget, The Monacelli Press, Gustavo Gili, Thames & Hudson, Rizzoli, Damiani, Page One, ORO editions, Whitney Library of Design, and Taschen. Oscar Riera Ojeda is also the creator of numerous architectural book series, including Ten Houses, Contemporary World Architects, The New American House and The New American Apartment, Architecture in Detail, and Single Building. His work has received many international awards, in-depth reviews, and citations. He is a regular contributor and consultant for several publications in the field.