February 12, 2019 | Gil Schafer III
Architect
“Creating Places to Call Home: How Tradition, Style and Memory Can Inspire Ways of Living”
Award-winning architect Gil Schafer III, AIA has focused his career on residential projects for more than 25 years. Prior to establishing G. P. Schafer Architect, PLLC in 2002, Gil worked in several distinguished traditional residential architecture practices including Ferguson Murray & Shamamian Architects, where he remained for nearly a decade, and worked on large-scale projects around the country, in places including Tulsa, Palm Beach, and Nashville. Over the last twenty years, Gil’s work has involved him in projects in numerous and varied locations around the country including New York, California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont; and in scales ranging from under 1,000 square feet to nearly 40,000 square feet.
The grandson and great, great grandson of architects, Gil grew up with a strong sense of how a well-built, thoughtfully-designed home can bring pleasure to daily life. Over the course of his childhood he was fortunate to be exposed to life in a variety of places, including the Midwest, the Northeast, Georgia, California and the Bahamas, each contributing to his sense of what makes places unique and how architectural traditions and lifestyle are influenced by context.
Following undergraduate studies in Growth & Structure of Cities at Haverford College and its sister institution Bryn Mawr, Gil graduated from Yale School of Architecture with a Masters Degree in 1988. While at Yale, Gil studied under several noted practitioners including Thomas Beeby, Robert Venturi, Josef Kleihues, Frank Gehry, and Benard Tschumi and was the recipient of the H. I. Feldman Prize, Yale’s highest honor for studio work, in his final semester.
In addition to his architectural practice, Gil lectures around the country on the relevance and livability of traditional residential architecture today and is the author of bestselling books, A Place to Call Home and The Great American House. He is a member of Architectural Digest’s AD100 and winner of Veranda’s “Art of Design Award.” His work and the firm’s projects have been widely published both here in the U. S. and abroad in both magazines and newspapers, including Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, House Beautiful, Veranda, Town & Country, Country Life, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among many others.
Gil serves on several non-profit boards and advisory councils, including the Yale School of Architecture’s Dean’s Council, the Dutchess Land Conservancy, and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello. He lives in New York City and the Hudson Valley.
photos via G. P. Schafer Architect