Peter Pennoyer Architects

Apartments, Townhouses, Country Houses
By: Anne Walker and Robert Stern
244 pages
10 x 
12 in. 
portrait
280 
color, b+w illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-86565-268-2
Hardcover with jacket
US $75 / 
CAN $86 / 

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Peter Pennoyer Architects practices a refined architecture that imaginatively reinterprets classical pre-war American design for modern living. Drawing upon the examples of aesthetic mentors Delano & Aldrich, Warren & Wetmore, and Grosvenor Atterbury, PPA’s projects strike a balance between comfort, luxury, and beauty. The work is characterized by a sophisticated use of detail and an insistence on meticulous craftsmanship and materials rarely found in contemporary architecture. This continuity with the past, both in concept and execution, lies at the very core of PPA’s award-winning designs.

Combining an inventive spirit with an erudite grasp of architectural history, PPA has been designing elegant, classically based homes in both urban and country settings for two decades. Twenty of the firm’s residential projects are featured in this sumptuously illustrated volume, ranging from a triplex on New York’s Fifth Avenue to a Spanish Colonial Revival house in San Francisco, from a farmhouse in the Virginia countryside to a ranch in New Mexico. Culminating two decades of practice, the recently completed Drumlin Hall in Dutchess County, New York, is a modern-day version of a Palladian villa—a house that revels in perfect proportion, rigorous geometry, and the great flexibility of the classical idiom.

No matter how they differ in style, each project embodies the basic principles of the profession—beauty, utility, and fitness—that Vitruvius postulated in the first century B.C. The uniqueness of a Pennoyer project lies in the firm’s solid grounding in—and fluency with—the classical idiom, which is not an end in itself but a point of departure. “It’s classicism with a twist,” says Peter Pennoyer. “We never repeat any design or even any aspect of a design. Our client can count on his house being singular in its outward guise.” Anne Walker’s discerning text for Peter Pennoyer Architects, illustrated with more than three hundred specially commissioned photographs, architectural drawings, and watercolors, offers a thoughtful approach to understanding PPA’s impeccable implementation of classical traditions and skillful adaptation of timeless design to the exigencies of modern life.

Peter Pennoyer’s eponymous firm is widely published and recognized for imaginative and elegant designs that draw from history and tradition. The firm is on the AD100 and Peter is the winner of the Veranda Art of Design Award and the Frederic E. Church Award. Peter is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and has written and lectured about architecture and style. Peter Pennoyer Architects has projects from Hong Kong to Newport, Rhode Island, and commissions for leading artists and tastemakers across the country.

Anne Walker holds a masters’ degree in historic preservation from Columbia University. She is the coauthor of The Ford Plantation Architectural Pattern Book and The Architecture of Delano & Aldrich, The Architecture of Warren & Wetmore, and The Architecture of Grosvenor Atterbury  (all with Peter Pennoyer).

Robert A. M. Stern, founder and Senior Partner of Robert A. M. Stern Architects, is Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the AIA New York Chapter’s President’s Award  (2001) and the Board of Directors’ Honor from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America (2007).

Like a summer’s day, each of Peter Pennoyer’s rooms invites and refreshes. His homes seem to have existed forever—perfectly proportioned, welcoming, and full of good times to come. A beautiful book to stroll through and linger in.

Sigourney Weaver

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