Frank Harmon on Transforming the Way We See
We’re going on a “field trip!”
Meeting to be held at the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in Raleigh
Award-winning, modernist architect Frank Harmon joins us in March for a conversation about architecture, landscape, everyday object, and nature and the delight found in ordinary places.
His most recent project is Native Places, a collection of 64 watercolor sketches paired with thoughtful meditations intended to transform the way transform the way we see. Through its pages, barns become guidebooks to crops and weather; a country church is redolent of the struggle for civil rights and human dignity; and a highway rest stop offers a glimpse of egalitarian society.
Native Places also expresses the belief that writing and hand-drawing are not obsolete skills. Both disciplines offer us the opportunity to develop a natural grace in the way we view the world and take part in it.
Frank has designed sustainable modern buildings across the Southeast for 30 years. He discovered architecture as a child playing in the streams and woods of his native Greensboro, North Carolina. His work engages pressing contemporary issues such as placelessness, sustainability, and restoration of cities and nature.
In early 2008, he won a national design competition for the AIA NC Center for Architecture and Design, which he describes as “a modern building with a green heart.” We’ll have the rare treat of not only hearing him talk about the unique features of the building, but being able to see it for ourselves.
The buildings he designs are specific to their sites and use materials such as hurricane-felled cypress and rock from local quarries to connect them to their landscapes. Airy breezeways, outdoor living spaces, deep overhangs, and wide lawns embody the vernacular legacy of the South while maintaining distinguished modernism.
Frank is a graduate of the Architectural Association in London and a professor at the North Carolina State University College of Design. He has taught at the Architectural Association and has served as a visiting critic at Harvard, the University of Virginia, and Auburn University’s Rural Studio.
https://www.frankharmon.com/