Tavolo, Designed by Peter Forbes, Fabricated by Franco Mobili, Italy

House Designed by Peter Forbes	Tavolo Under Construction	Tavolo Under Construction

Peter Forbes, F.A.I.A.

Peter Forbes, F.A.I.A., is a practicing architect with studios in Seal Harbor, Maine, and Florence, Italy.  His work is internationally known for its articulate minimalism, sensitive relationship to the land and consummate detailing of materials.  The recipient of over thirty awards for design excellence, the work has been the subject of many articles in design magazines throughout the world and of the monograph Ten Houses, the Work of Peter Forbes and Associates published by Rockport Press in 1997.  Forbes’s design for the Wenglowski House on Deer Isle, Maine, is one of very few projects in Maine awarded a National Honor Award by the American Institute of Architects and the only Maine residence so honored.

Forbes has been a visiting or adjunct professor of architecture at Harvard University, Catholic University in Rome, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Technical University of Nova Scotia, and the University of Michigan.  He was director of the Italian Studies Program of Wentworth Institute of Technology.  Academic schedule still governs Forbes’s life; however, it is now the elementary school schedule of his seven year old daughter with whom he and his wife reside in Florence during the winter months.  During her summer vacation the family returns to their house on Greenings Island, Southwest Harbor, Maine.

Matrix International will be producing the table.  The actual fabricator for Matrix is:
Franco Mobili
Via Filippo Brunelleschi, 4
50021 Barberino Val d'Elsa (FI)
Italia

PETER FORBES, FAIA

Peter Forbes & Associates

Peter Forbes, F.A.I.A. Architects was founded in 2001 by Peter Forbes, FAIA, with offices in Seal Harbor, Maine, and Florence, Italy.  Prior to 2001 the office operated as Peter Forbes and Associates with principal offices in Boston, Massachusetts.  The original firm was founded in 1980 and within four years had expanded its practice, opened branch offices in Maine and New York City and was engaged in projects throughout the United States.  Since that time the Forbes studio has become celebrated for their architecture of rigorously simple forms carefully sited in the landscape and meticulously detailed.

The firm was first recognized by the cover story in Architectural Record magazine of December 1981, followed by Record House Awards in 1983, 1986, 1987 and 1989.  In 1986 Peter Forbes received the National Honor Award for a house designed on Deer Isle, Maine, only the third National Honor Award ever given to a building in Maine and still the only such award given to a house in Maine.   With the extensive publication of this house throughout the world architectural press and its subsequent receipt of six additional awards, the Forbes studio became established as one of a very few firms who primarily focus on residential architecture at the highest level of design.  They were further distinguished in an era of fleetingly transient fashions in design as a firm committed to timeless architecture, neither trendy nor historicist, excellently constructed of materials that would endure.  For this work the firm has received over thirty design awards and has been extensively published in periodicals and professional journals in America, Europe and Asia.

Throughout the history of the firm, the Forbes studio has been selected to design a variety of building types, commercial, institutional and public as well as residential.  The common denominator of these commissions and the resulting buildings has been an imperative to evolve innovative solutions to design problems that have few, if any, precedents.  Whether the program demanded an exploration of alternative materials to produce a toxin-free environment or the
invention of low energy, low environmental impact structures for the military, or an urban residential prototype that mitigated the effects of dense urban settlement and noise--including the now ubiquitous intrusion of aircraft sound-- these were not conditions that could be resolved through the reiteration of formal preconceptions.  Each of these, and similar demands, required an independence from reliance upon past solutions.  Each necessitated intense analysis of program, client and site specifics, often resulting in the development of innovative materials, systems and fabrication techniques. 

The Forbes studio approaches architecture without stylistic "baggage", achieving new solutions to complex problems from within the needs and desires of the client and the dictates of the site.

As important as their involvement is with technical innovation, the Forbes studio and is equally engaged in re-examining the cultural parameters that underlie society's need for architecture.  The basic tenet of its architecture is that to design is, in essence, to explain:  the function, the role or the meaning of the designed object in its universe.  Only through its relationship to the orders, ceremonies and beliefs of a culture can technical innovation achieve meaning beyond the most immediate functional response.   Only when design is in resonance with intrinsic human concerns, not superficial preconceptions, can it ascend from mere shelter to genuine architecture.   This resonance is constantly changing; its determination, a constant search. That exploration is what the architecture of Peter Forbes, F.A.I.A., Architects is about.