Native Places: Drawing as a Way to See

(Hardback)

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Native Places is a collection of sixty-four watercolour sketches that are paired with mini essays about architecture, landscape, everyday objects, and nature. The sketches relate the delight found in ordinary places. The short essays, rather than repeat what is visible in the sketch, illustrate ideas and thoughts sparked by that image and offer a fresh interpretation of ordinary things. The goal of Native Places is, in part, to transform the way we see. Through its pages, barns become a guidebook to crops and weather; a country church is redolent of the struggle for civil rights and human dignity; a highway rest-stop offers a glimpse of egalitarian society. This book also explores the belief that hand drawing and writing are not obsolete skills. Both disciplines offer us as citizens, the opportunity to develop a natural grace in the way we view the world and take part in it. AUTHOR: Frank Harmon, FAIA has designed sustainable modern buildings across the Southeast for 30 years. His work engages pressing contemporary issues such as placelessness, sustainability, and restoring cities and nature. His buildings are specific to their region, using hurricane-felled cypress and rock from local quarries to connect the structure to its landscape. The airy breezeways, outdoor living spaces, deep overhangs, and wide lawns embody the romanticism of the South while maintaining a distinguished modernism. SELLING POINTS: Frank is recognised as a purveyor of good design by his students, peers, and clients. In 2013, he received the F. Carter Williams Gold Medal from the North Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANC), the highest honour bestowed upon a North Carolina architect. He holds numerous awards recognising his contributions to design and sustainability Harmon's firm, Frank Harmon Architect, has been named in Architect magazine's "Top 50" list three times A graduate of the Architectural Association in London, he is professor at the NC State College of Design, has taught at the Architectural Association, and has been a visiting critic at Harvard, the University of Virginia, and the Rural Studio at Auburn University A noted writer and illustrator, Frank uses hand-drawn sketches and mini-essays to examine the relationship between nature and built structures 160 colour images

Reviews

"Frank Harmon's sketches and essays are a quick window into a truth. He's asking us to go deeper and grander with a historical perspective, and to understand why things are the way they are. It's more the 'why' than the 'what.' " -- Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, Marlon Blackwell Architects, Fayetteville, Arkansas
"It's accessible and beautiful writing that's thought-provoking, spiritual and uplifting. It's like he knew what we needed." - Julieta Sherk, landscape architect, professor, J. William Fulbright Global Scholar
"There are as few gestures as possible to capture a multi-layered spirit. There's almost always an element of landscape and something out of the ordinary and something extraordinary. A world emerges... His idea is not to get in the way of pure observation, that you're looking at the world with clear eyes. It reassures us, basically, that our instincts are right." -- Tod Williams, FAIA, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Partners, New York, New York
"Frank Harmon has designed many important and beautiful buildings. Here is a work of his art you can hold in your hands. Enlightening and joyous, Native Places takes us into and beyond what Harmon calls the 'broken places' of the world and gives the reader a new way to see them." -- Best-selling novelist Angela Davis-Gardner
"It's simultaneously academic and intimate -- and it speaks to humanity." -- Tom Kundig, FAIA, Olson Kundig Architects, Seattle, Washington
"Native Places is a sketchbook, memoir, travel journal, aesthetic experiment, a collection of small familiar essays, and maybe in some respects even a manifesto. I venture this last possibility because of the consistent appreciation and celebration of the vernacular. It leads us to discover the 'ordinary, ' which is not the same as the obvious, and then to agree that place does not contain architecture but, in the wisest instances, allies with it, or perhaps brothers with it. It brings me to observe things I had not seen because I only took them for granted. Native Places reminds me of a saying by the composer Max Bruch: 'One folk song is worth a hundred art songs.' " -- Fred Chappell, author, poet, professor, and North Carolina poet Laureate 1997-2002

Author Bio

Frank Harmon, FAIA, has designed sustainable modern buildings across the Southeast for 30 years. He discovered architecture as a child playing in the streams and woods of his native Greensboro, North Carolina. His work engages pressing contemporary issues such as placelessness, sustainability, and restoration of cities and nature. The buildings he designs are specific to their sites and use materials such as hurricane-felled cypress and rock from local quarries to connect them to their landscapes. Airy breezeways, outdoor living spaces, deep overhangs, and wide lawns embody the vernacular legacy of the South while maintaining a distinguished modernism. Frank is a graduate of the Architectural Association in London and a professor at the North Carolina State University College of Design. He has taught at the Architectural Association and has served as a visiting critic at Harvard, the University of Virginia, and Auburn University's Rural Studio.