“I continue to be interested in new things that seem old and old things that seem new,” says Jaquelin T. Robertson, of New York’s Cooper, Robertson & Partners. Krier and [Frank] Gehry, for example, have each re-created their respective architectural worlds—both of which are contemporary and easily coexist.” The architect is himself familiar with re-creating architectural worlds, having designed everything from Shingle Style houses in the Hamptons and a classically inspired villa in the Dominican Republic to the 4,900-acre community of Celebration in Florida, a project done for the Walt Disney Company in collaboration with Robert A. M. Stern.

The former dean of the architecture school at the University of Virginia, Robertson cofounded his firm with architect and urban planner Alexander Cooper in 1988, and it has since grown to a staff of 120. Robertson notes that he is chiefly interested in how a building “fits its site, its ‘seat’ on the land, its proportions, massing and materiality. Good buildings,” he explains, “make and are made by their settings, and they are appropriately different in different locations. Climate, culture, topography and materials have helped create regional architectural languages that seem curiously right for their locations and for all times. Vitruvius, the great Roman engineer, spoke of the ‘genius of place,’ which it is the architect’s task to discover. His dictum seems as relevant today as it did circa 41 b

Jaquelin T. Robertson

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