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    The Alchemy of Architecture: Memories and Insights from Ken Tate
    The Alchemy of Architecture: Memories and Insights from Ken Tate
    The Alchemy of Architecture: Memories and Insights from Ken Tate
    Ebook119 pages1 hour

    The Alchemy of Architecture: Memories and Insights from Ken Tate

    By Ken Tate and Duke Tate

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    About this ebook

    This is celebrated architect Ken Tate's creative memoir about his life.

     

    Beginning with his days growing up in Columbus, Mississippi where he was surrounded by beautiful Greek Revival houses, the book journeys through Ken's upbringing as a creative adolescent to his early days at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta where he started his architectural collegiate career. There Ken struggled to keep up with the hard-edged modernism being taught in school and longed to design beautiful houses with soul.

     

    His quest led him on to Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, where he found what he was looking for in two creative professors, Jim Jones and Lewis Lanter, who mentored him. That tutelage led him to write his architectural thesis Architecture in Search of a Soul. Following graduation from Auburn, Ken journeyed to work for eccentric talent Bruce Goff in Texas and afterwards for Sambo Mockbee in Jackson, Mississippi. He established his own firm, Ken Tate Architect, in 1984 in Jackson, Mississippi, which began a lifelong career of designing houses in an alchemical way where an inner essence was breathed into them.

     

    Full of rich detail and texture, the book follows Ken's 35-year career from Jackson to New Orleans and on to Palm Beach where the firm has opened their second office. Covering his approach to design, how architecture relates to cinema and photography, advice, reflections and even epiphanies, the book is a must read for any fan of the profession. The book features many black and white photos taken over Ken's life and career.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPearl Press LLC
    Release dateOct 8, 2020
    ISBN9781951465056

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      Book preview

      The Alchemy of Architecture - Ken Tate

      1

      The Beginning

      Standing, gazing upward into the vast volume above, the eight-year-old Ken Tate had an early epiphany about architecture—that it had the power to create wonder and awe.

      That volume that he was staring up into was the three-story stair hall of his friend John Kaye’s Greek Revival-style family house, Camelia Place, in Columbus, Mississippi. Ken spent time at that house and many others that his close friends lived in. Another one in particular was his friend Joe Boggess’s family home, Whitehall. These treasures, as well as the rest of the large number of Greek Revival structures in Columbus, Mississippi shaped his thinking about space, materials, design, composition, proportions, quality, and context—whether he knew it at the time or not. In this small town in Mississippi that prospered from the booming cotton industry of the early to mid-nineteenth century, there is beautiful traditional architecture everywhere, and it was wonderful to be around. For a child and young teen with an enhanced visual acuity, it was paradise.

      The beauty of Ken’s hometown—Columbus, Mississippi—became part of his psyche. A small pre-Civil War town, Columbus is located on the banks of the Tombigbee River, nestled between it and the Luxapalila River to the East. With its topography of black belt prairie just outside town and high bluffs at the river, there were many opportunities to site beautiful homes for people who gravitated toward the area for the rich soil—beneficial for planting cotton and raising livestock—that lead to Columbus’s role in the cotton boom of the 1840s. The growth and wealth that arrived brought these beautiful Greek Revival homes to the town itself and across the country. Over 110 of this type remain standing today and over 600 buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places..  Mature landscaping, trees, and gardens abound. The development of the Greek Revival style as expressed  particularly in Columbus was a mixture of influences of  Creole colonial from the Gulf mixed with the East Coast designs.  Houses from the 1820-30’s  were altered to show Greek Revival design elements.

      The Civil War brought about shifts in the way commerce was conducted, but Columbus survived the transition and continued to build beautiful homes in the Victorian era, introducing some transitional elements as Victorian designs became popular. The beautiful gardens, the culture, and the society continued. The shady magnolias and oaks continued to grow. The boxwood parterres matured, the camellias became giants, and azaleas nestled around the base of many a building. As time went by, Neoclassical and Colonial homes were added to the mix, followed by Craftsman styles. An eclectic mix became the look of Columbus, anchored by the majestic Greek Revival giants. Columbus has hosted an annual pilgrimage for many years where tourists come from far and wide to tour these homes.

      Growing up amid architecture in Columbus was an experience that inserted itself into Ken’s psyche. Although he didn’t know he wanted to be an architect at the time, reflecting on it now, the architecture of Columbus had a big influence on his perception of the world—these buildings weren’t just there to look good, there was an essence, an inner life that imparted something important to people, over

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