Jaquelin T. Robertson
Jaquelin Taylor Robertson, FAIA, FAICP, usually credited as Jaquelin T. Robertson and informally known as "Jaque," is an American architect and urban designer.
He is a representative of New Urbanism and New Classical Architecture.
Life and career
After graduating from Yale College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1954 and spending a year at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, Robertson received a Master of Architecture degree from Yale School of Architecture in 1961.
Working in New York City Planning, he was the founder of the New York City Urban Design Group,[1] the first Director of the Mayor's Office of Midtown Planning and Development, and a City Planning Commissioner.
In 1975, he spent three years in Tehran, Iran, directing the planning and design of the country's new capitol center Shahestan Pahlavi[2] in the Abbas Abad district of Tehran.
From 1980 to 1988, Robertson was Dean of the University of Virginia School of Architecture where there is now an Endowed Professorship in his name entitled the "Jaquelin T. Robertson Visiting Professorship in Architecture." At UVA, Robertson often invited notable guest speakers and organized a famous symposium with 25 of the nation's leading architects, including Robert A. M. Stern and Léon Krier, that resulted in the publication of a book entitled The Charlottesville Tapes. During this same period (1980 to 1987), he was partnered with Peter Eisenman in the firm Eisenman/Robertson Architects in New York City.
In 1988, he stepped down from the University of Virginia post and his partnership with Peter Eisenman to join his Yale School of Architecture classmate Alex Cooper in his firm in New York City, established now under a new name: Cooper, Robertson & Partners.
His notable work includes the New Albany Country Club in New Albany, Ohio outside Columbus, the Visitor Center at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia, the Henry Moore Sculpture Garden at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Master Plan for Celebration, Florida for the Disney Development Company as well as the Golf Clubhouse there, The Institute for the Arts & Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Master Plan for the new community of Val d'Europe, outside Paris, France, the Sony Pictures Imageworks Headquarters Building in Culver City, California, and numerous private residences.
Having designed many AIA (American Institute of Architects) award-winning houses, many of which are in the Hamptons on the East End of Long Island and in the Caribbean, Robertson was named one of "the AD 100," Architectural Digest's list of the top 100 architects and interior designers whose work has been published by Architectural Digest over the years.
Robertson is both a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects[3] and a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners.
Career awards
- Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture 1998
- Seaside Institute Prize 2002
- Richard H. Driehaus Prize for New Classical Architecture 2007
Quotes
- "The symbolic hard currency of architecture is classical,... It's gold in the bank. The other stuff is leveraged buy-outs and soybean futures." [4]
External links
- Cooper, Robertson & Partners website
- "In Search of an American Urban Order" by Jaquelin T. Robertson
- Architectural Digest: The AD 100: Jaquelin T. Robertson
- Architectural Digest, August 2004: Reinterpreting the Classics
- Architectural Digest, Feb 2005: A House to Hold the Land
- Architectural Digest, April 2007: A Memorable Second Act in East Hampton
- Architectural Digest, June 2003: Peaceable Kingdom
- Architectural Digest: 100 Great Spaces - Part 3
Further reading
- Cooper, Robertson & Partners: Cities to Gardens. The Images Publishing Group Pty Ltd, 2007 ISBN 1-86470-167-6
- The Charlottesville Tapes by Jaquelin T. Robertson et al., Rizzoli, New York, 1982 & 1985 ISBN 0-8478-0538-7
- "In Search of an American Urban Order" by Jaquelin T. Robertson, Modulus 16 (1983) Ed. Robert Claiborne. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia School of Architecture.[5]
- "Robertson, Jacquelin T. Shahestan Pahlavi: Steps Toward a New Iranian Centre. Conference Lecture and Proceedings: Toward an Architecture in the Spirit of Islam (1978)"