Place Matters ― The Architecture of W. G. Clark

The architecture of WG Clark is inextricably grounded in its place, the Atlantic coastal states of the American South. Over the course of his 40-year career as a modern architect practicing in historic contexts, Clark has constructed a small but significant body of work of unparalleled high quality and experiential richness. Clark’s remarkably resolved spatial compositions are formally restrained and contextually appropriate, and while relatively few in number, have nevertheless exerted an outsize influence on architects around the world. Clark’s regional grounding, slow and measured pace of design, and modest publicity has provided him with the time-in-place necessary for thinking and making at the very highest level. Like the relatively few works of Louis Kahn and Carlo Scarpa, the works of WG Clark have attained canonical status, and his redefinition of architectural design as being grounded in the history of the discipline, as well as in the particularities of its place, has proved to be of ever-increasing relevance to contemporary practice.