Firm Description. The buildings of Turner Brooks Architect are known for their successful response to different site conditions, programs, and budgets. The emphasis is on innovative design, ecological, and economically sound solutions. The work of Turner Brooks Architect has been widely featured in both books and architectural journals here and abroad. In 1995 Princeton Architectural Press published the monograph: Turner Brooks: Work. Several houses have been published in Record Magazine’s annual “Record Houses” issue. Many of the institutional projects, including the Gilder Boathouse for Yale University, were won in invited architectural competitions. Turner has been invited to lecture on his work throughout the United States and abroad.

The firm was founded in Starksboro, Vermont in 1972. In its early stages Turner worked in association with a group of master carpenters doing ‘design-build’ to produce a series of small affordable residences. The work also included several small institutional projects for local communities including a boarding school campus and public elementary school additions. In 1984 Turner was awarded the Mid-Career Rome Prize. As work gained in volume, the office expanded and moved to Burlington, Vermont in 1985. In 1989 Turner became Professor Adjunct at the Yale School of Architecture and a member of the ’core’ faculty of that school. The office moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1996 where the firm soon won the competition for Yale University’s new boathouse on the Housatonic River.

Current work includes the renovation of a Masonic lodge into a performing arts center, and a new campus of housing and classroom buildings at an institution for the treatment of children with autism spectrum disorders. Recently finished is The Cushing Collection at the Yale Medical School, a small museum and archive space exhibiting the work and collections of the pioneering brain surgeon, Dr. Harvey Cushing.

Approach and Process. Turner Brooks Architect strives to explore a client’s desires and dreams and to translate them into meaningful, beautiful, enduring places. We have found that the most successful projects to be those in which the client has fully participated in the evolution of the design. With a new project we come prepared to listen to the client with an attitude of discovering the possibilities that are offered by the program and site. (The matter of ‘listening’ applies also to the site, which has its own voice). It is often the friction between program and site that makes a design begin to ‘percolate’ and take form. The realities of budget and time almost always enter in as ‘referees’ to this friction.

In the initial stages of a design project we explore several different alternatives with the client. We believe this is the only way to develop the most appropriate response to a given program. In this phase we typically use a series of physical models showing both the interior and exterior of the building which are further defined in hand-drawn sketches and computer-generated renderings.

We take pride in our thorough construction drawings and specifications as well as in the careful management and supervision of the construction process. Through careful siting, selection of local and sustainable materials, and use of high efficiency products and equipment, our buildings strive to tread lightly on the land. Our last building has LEED Platinum accreditation.

Each member of the firm brings a wide variety of experience and expertise. Our long-established relationships with outside consultants provides our clients with a complete range of related services to complement our own design capabilities. The firm's ‘hands-on’ origins gives it a particularly good understanding of the ‘reality’ of construction with an emphasis on thorough building documents, site supervision, and close collaboration with building contractors.