formation

I became aware of architecture as a 20 year old when I left Swarthmore College and traveled to Mexico and Guatemala camping in the jungles surrounding the ruins of the Mayan sites of Palenque and Tikal. The sacred pyramidal temples in stone rose above the jungle canopy and inspired me with the possibilities of building. I went to Columbia University in architecture and learned the fundamental principles of design, structure and building systems. Peter Gluck, Architect, my first employer, began to teach me how to draw buildings so they could be built.

My training at Columbia was primarily intellectual and I longed to see architecture built out of a tradition by craftsman. I received a Fulbright Scholarship and a Polish government grant to study the wooden churches in Poland and moved to Krakow in southern Poland for a year to study them. I also did three architectural projects for the U.S. Consul in Krakow: a renovation of the Visa section, a house and an apartment renovation.