The 23rd Annual McKim Lecture with Hugh Petter

The Value of Tradition: A Personal Journey

By ICAA

October 16, 2024

At the 23rd Annual McKim Lecture, presented on March 6, 2024, the ICAA was honored to welcome Hugh Petter, Director of ADAM Architecture and master-planner, as distinguished speaker.

In his lecture, Hugh draws upon his academic research and the varied project work published in his recent monograph, Living Tradition, to lay out how he believes the past has so much to teach us as we wrestle with contemporary design problems, and how we can produce new buildings that are not only elegant, enduring, and highly sustainable, but which also sit comfortably alongside their older neighbors and landscape settings to create beautiful, harmonious places.

Having helped to pioneer new, collaborative ways of working with landowners and developers, and by adopting a coherent common design language rooted in vernacular traditions, Hugh explains how it is possible to conceive and deliver elegant new commercial urban development that reinforces local character and cultural identity in ways that are at once familiar, popular, and enduring. He demonstrates too how such an approach to development can embrace social inclusiveness and build civilized communities whilst creating a significant long term economic premium and, most importantly, enabling the residents to live low carbon lives.

Hugh Petter is an architect and master-planner with a profound and wide-ranging interest in traditional architecture and contextual urbanism. He is architect to the Duchy of Cornwall and His Majesty’s Duchy of Lancaster.

Since 1997 Hugh has been a director of ADAM Architecture, employing over 130 people in Winchester and London. He enjoys worldwide recognition for his diverse project portfolio of new town and country houses: conversion, renovation, and extensions to listed buildings; commercial, retail, sports venue, and tertiary education projects, and masterplans for mixed use developments for private, institutional, and local authority landowners.

For over 20 years Hugh has been both the master-planner and co-ordinating architect for Nansledan, a mixed use urban extension of 4,000 new homes for the Duchy of Cornwall. Other recent award winning projects include a new entrance and forecourt at The Oval for Surrey County Cricket Club; the restoration of the Grade I Listed Chettle House in Dorset; and the new multipurpose Levine Building at Trinity College in Oxford.

Hugh won Rome Scholarships in 1990 and 1991. He helped establish the Foundation Course at The Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture, and has served as trustee and vice chairman of the Georgian Group; trustee of The Prince’s Foundation, and trustee and Chairman of the Art Workers Guild.

Hugh’s work is widely published. He has written numerous articles and essays and is a visiting tutor and external examiner to several colleges across the UK and overseas.

A monograph, Living Tradition: The Architecture and Urbanism of Hugh Petter, was published by Triglyph Books in October 2023.

The 23rd Annual McKim Lecture with Hugh Petter

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