Features
The 25 – Aaron C. Ruby
When he was studying architecture at the University of Arkansas, Aaron C. Ruby spent a semester in Rome, which changed the course of his career and led to his lasting impact in the field of historic preservation.
“I came back to school really struggling with designing new projects,” he says. “My professors called it ‘Post-Rome Syndrome.’ It was at this time that I really started to dig into preservation, and frankly, pushing back against one of my design instructors who wanted to insert a New Urbanist development on undeveloped and perfectly wonderful farmland outside of Fayetteville, Arkansas.”
Ruby’s desire to study existing, older buildings intensified. “After five years of architecture school, I was not even close to capable of being able to design the grand buildings of Europe—but I wanted to be—so I entered preservation to continue to learn,” he says.
Through his Arkansas-based company, Revival Architecture, Ruby and his team have restored and renovated residential and commercial buildings and have designed and built new-construction structures in traditional styles.
It is because of passionate practitioners like Ruby that the general public now understands the value of older buildings and acknowledges that they deserve special protection.
“Examples of how preservation has revitalized cities and neighborhoods abound,” he says. “I like to think that the impact of my own work has contributed to this end, at least in my neck of the woods.”
He pauses before adding that “I think my greatest accomplishment will not likely be in the field of architecture or historic preservation, actually. I join many of my colleagues and fellow citizens in volunteering and serving others—it is the lifeblood of a healthy society. Having an impact on younger generations is, without question, my most rewarding accomplishment.”
