Turner Brooks Architect

After architecture school (YSoA 1970 MA) and a brief stint working in New York City in 1970- 1971, Turner moved to Starksboro Vermont. There, excited by the vernacular design traditions, and the spatial elastic freedom that wood ‘balloon’ frame construction allowed, and finding clients that were equally free in responding to spatial thoughts, his practice began as both an architect and carpenter (joined by other carpenters with incredible skills).  Along with the local very low budget small houses he became involved with institutional projects, especially local school buildings, as well as designing houses in other parts of the country. Turner received the Mid-Career Rome Prize in 1984. He had been drawn to Rome especially to study what seemed an ultimate spatial elasticity in the work the Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. The office moved from Starksboro to Burlington in1986 partly in order to collaborate with the planner Elizabeth Humstone, and other architects in the Burlington area. Some larger projects such as a facility for theater and the arts at The College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine’, and an affordable housing project in Middlebury Vermont, developed at this time. Turner had begun teaching part time at the Yale School of Architecture in 1982 and, when the teaching load increased, he moved to New Haven in 1990. There he won the competition for the Yale Boathouse and some other small institutional projects. Most recently he has been working on a palliative care facility for the aging, transitional housing for homeless people in New Haven, and some very small house projects.