Born a sixth-generation Vermonter to an ancestry of farmers, my eye has always been drawn to the vernacular homes and buildings of New England.  This has undoubtedly shaped my ideas and philosophies of what architecture is and what its role in society should be.  

I believe in craft-based architecture that is as much about the builder as it is the architect, and I believe that architecture should always be rooted as much in its historical context as in its present.  Architecture today has to a large extent become homogeneous; a contemporary building in downtown Manhattan doesn't seem to differ much from a contemporary building in downtown Tokyo.  This of course is due in large part to the ways in which technology, although able to connect us to a much wider-reaching network of people, has resulted in widespread homogeneousness.

Of course not everyone is bothered by that, and I respect that.  I can certainly appreciate a well-executed project no matter what its aesthetic, and that's okay, too.  I just happen to believe that the best architecture, the architecture than can elicit more than ooh's and aah's, requires a much deeper root system, one that doesn't require as much watering to keep it happy, and alive.