PETER MATTHEWS AIA LEED AP
Peter focuses on giving form to meaningful ideas. For him, architectural design has a great potential to engage and affect lives by representing relevant ideas. Beyond the capability to solve problems and address particular needs, good design is evident when it gives form to a vital experience. Both, a thorough approach to ‘programming’ to clearly define needs and design, can be acts of leadership that help mediate conflicting interests. Beyond aesthetics, Peter’s design engages us in a memorable experience that makes sense in our increasingly complex lives.
Growing up in a family of painters and admen, aesthetics for him have always been framed by pragmatic considerations. Peter took year-long ‘Grand Tours’ sketching and photographing Pre-columbian ruin sites in South America and the roots of Modern Architecture in Europe. More recently, these efforts have shifted to critical writing on the design work of architects Rafael Moneo and Edward Larrabee Barnes. Peter has taught graduate level design studios and been on design juries at Princeton, Yale, and Carnegie Mellon Universities with a focus on the societal shifts and human impacts caused by technology.
Peter’s vision is evident in his iconic design for Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute, featured on the cover of ARCHITECTURAL RECORD. The design was a break-through success for the firm of BCJ Architects, winning national recognition and the 1994 AIA Firm Award. With professional training gained in several other notable architectural practices in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh and San Francisco, Peter started practicing independently on Nantucket. In that practice, he guided many complex residential and commercial projects through the island’s rigorous historical and regulatory environment. He served on the Nantucket Planning and Economic Development Commission, where he advocated Green Planning principles with the Village Plan, and proposed zoning reform through an island-wide Comprehensive Plan.
Peter is an adept facilitator working with focus groups, committees, and decision-makers to realize their challenging programs. His proposal for WORKFORUM recently led to an invitation to join the Council on Competitiveness (compete.org), a Washington D.C. based forum of CEO’s and university presidents. With a concentration on arts and educational facilities, he has enjoyed repeat clients in prominent businesses and institutions, such as The Dalton School, The LeFrak Organization, and the Hillman family of Pittsburgh. Having won national awards and been featured in professional journals, his designs express a timeless aesthetic of tectonic integrity.
NCARB Certificate – Registered Architect in New York and Massachusetts
Download Peter's full resume: Resume