BRIAN BOATRIGHT ARCHITECT, INC.
ORANGE PARK, FLORIDA

I am an architect, a career designer. I think outside the box, laterally, making all sorts of odd connections and juxtapositions. When designing I go from the Big Picture to the details and back; I look at the forest and then count the trees. I’m not just a licensed architect and interior designer, I also hold licenses as a contractor and real estate broker. And I am a “green” architect accredited with the US Green Building Council in LEED (Leadership in Energy Efficient Design). My current specialty is Building Design + Construction (so technically I am a LEED AP, BD+C). I have several successful LEED projects in my portfolio, including a silver and gold certification. I have also become a Green Globes Professional (GGP). While they don’t provide support for single-family homes, in many cases it is a better system for multi-family and commercial projects. I have a Bachelor of Design, with honors, from the University of Florida as well as a Master of Architecture degree from the same fine institution. I have been doing this for over 25 years. During this time I worked for several architectural firms, large and small. To do architecture today you need to know computers. Everything is done with CADD (computer-aided design & drafting). And there are new tools in our pouch: BIM (Building Information Modeling) and 3D rendering. I have a lot of experience with all of them. During my career I worked briefly for Autodesk, the software company that makes AutoCAD and Revit, the two leading programs for CADD and BIM. Lately I have worked a lot with SketchUp, a fast 3D modeling program that was freely available from Google and now owned by Trimble. I have traveled widely, but my toes are firmly rooted in Florida sand. My family has been in Florida for over 190 years. We voted for statehood. My grandfather built himself a Cracker house in Live Oak and I did my thesis on an updated Cracker house (modern vernacular) that won an international housing design award. Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect born on June 8, 1867 in Wisconsin and died on April 9, 1959, in Arizona. It is not certain he ever graduated from high school and although he attended a couple of semesters part-time at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he never completed a degree. He then began working as a draftsman with a series of architectural firms in Chicago. By the age of 21 he was working at the prestigious offices of Adler & Sullivan. He worked there for 5 years, producing at least 9 “bootleg” houses on the side (violating Adler & Sullivan’s prohibition against moonlighting). At age 27 he began his own practice in Chicago, sharing an office with three other architects. By 1901, age 34, he had completed about 50 projects and had begun to establish his own style–the “Prairie” style–typified by simple geometric massing, strong horizontal elements, low-pitched roofs with wide overhangs and natural materials that reflected the prairie around the Chicago area. To be fair, he learned a lot from Louis Sullivan whose phrase “Form follows function” became the rallying cry of modern architecture. Wright expanded this in his “organic” architecture philosophy. Essentially it means that the form of a building (exterior shape and arrangement of spaces within the building) should lead logically from the functions of the spaces, so that rather than forcing functions into a preconceived form, the final form of the building is a direct reflection of the functions within. Much like skin covers muscles that have functional purposes in their shape and location in the body. In Wright’s houses rooms flowed into each other, usually around a large central fireplace (he loved the idea of the fireplace as the “hearth” of the home). It was the beginning of the “open plan.” He placed windows in series and often down to the floor to provide a visual connection between the interior and exterior. Roofs were simple, low and sheltering. As he put it buildings should “rise naturally from the ground.” So here you have a largely self-educated architect breaking new ground, leaving the ancient Greek and Roman stereotypes behind, gradually discarding ornamentation, and dissolving the cultural standards of little “cubicle” rooms. Bold geometric shapes, large expanses of glass joining exterior landscaping with interior free-flowing spaces. His term for his philosophy of design was “organic.” Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect born on June 8, 1867 in Wisconsin and died on April 9, 1959, in Arizona. It is not certain he ever graduated from high school and although he attended a couple of semesters part-time at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he never completed a degree. He then began working as a draftsman with a series of architectural firms in Chicago. By the age of 21 he was working at the prestigious offices of Adler & Sullivan. He worked there for 5 years, producing at least 9 “bootleg” houses on the side (violating Adler & Sullivan’s prohibition against moonlighting). At age 27 he began his own practice in Chicago, sharing an office with three other architects. By 1901, age 34, he had completed about 50 projects and had begun to establish his own style–the “Prairie” style–typified by simple geometric massing, strong horizontal elements, low-pitched roofs with wide overhangs and natural materials that reflected the prairie around the Chicago area. To be fair, he learned a lot from Louis Sullivan whose phrase “Form follows function” became the rallying cry of modern architecture. Wright expanded this in his “organic” architecture philosophy. Essentially it means that the form of a building (exterior shape and arrangement of spaces within the building) should lead logically from the functions of the spaces, so that rather than forcing functions into a preconceived form, the final form of the building is a direct reflection of the functions within. Much like skin covers muscles that have functional purposes in their shape and location in the body.