Arts & Culture Magazine - January/February 2008 - (Page 44) Arts & Culture MAgAzine \ BUILDING cONTEMPORARY Guy Peterson By Marty Fugate. Photos by A.L. Canterbury. 1234 First Street 44 : : arts and culture magazine uy Peterson, FAIA, is the president and principal architect at the firm bearing his name. Appropriately, he both lives and works in Sarasota, the town that helped make him the architect he is. “I grew up here,” Peterson says. “As I’ve said, I wasn’t part of the Sarasota School of Architecture, but it was part of me growing up.” Peterson’s boyhood schools were all designed by Sarasota School architects: Alta Vista Elementary School had a butterfly-shaped addition by Victor Lundy; Brookside Junior High was the co-creation of William and Ralph Zimmerman; Riverview High School sprang from mind of Paul Rudolph. Peterson considers himself a third-generation Sarasota School architect. In his view, the style began as a softer, more tropical, interpretation of Bauhaus architecture and the International Style. “The structures had integrity,” he says. “A rhythm, order and logic that wasn’t always symmetrical. Their aesthetic was open; their materials appropriate to Florida. It was an honest response to our climate.” From his barrel-roofed home on Manasota Key, to his addition to Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph’s Revere House on Siesta Key, Peterson stays true to the same principles, while exploiting twenty-first century materials and techniques. Honoring the site is a core Sarasota School principle. Peterson has made it his own. “A building should never look plopped down,” he says.” It should seem to grow out of the site.” Achieving that means asking a lot of questions. “Is the site on the G
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