Features
The 25 – Anne Fairfax and Richard Sammons
Founding partners of the internationally recognized architectural firm that bears their names, Anne Fairfax and Richard Sammons are at the forefront of a movement among architects today who are committed to tradition and innovation.
Drawing inspiration from the wellspring of Classical traditions, they have developed a body of work that reflects the theories of proportion and order that have been passed down through scholarship and practice for generations and have worked on numerous projects designed by such renowned architects as John L. Volk, Marion Sims Wyeth, Maurice Fatio, and Addison Mizner.
“Our body of work, established over a 30-year period, reflects the ethos that the built environment’s legacy should be imbued with longevity, both in its approach to materials and practical elements and its relationship with the past and present,” Fairfax says.
Sammons adds that “we feel the best preservation tool a community can wield is to build with integrity and respect for the past and not be afraid to ask that beauty be a requisite.”
The duo—they are partners in marriage as well as in business—met at the University of Virginia, where they discovered a mutual passion for traditional architecture at a time when their instructors and colleagues were more interested in modern design.
Upon graduation, they set out to change the narrative and create a firm that focused exclusively on traditional design services.
In addition, they joined forces with Henry Hope Reed, the founder of Classical America, and became part of his mission to reprint Classical art and design texts and publish new works on the Classical tradition in art and architecture. With support from philanthropist Arthur Ross, they helped Reed lead the organization until 2002, when it became the Institute of Classical Architecture, now known as the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art.
They believe that the future of traditional architecture and Classicism lies in sustainable practices (reuse, repurpose, and recycle) and the investigation of traditional building materials and appropriate and robust technology.
Members of the INTBAU College of Traditional Practitioners, an international body for practitioners in traditional architecture under the auspices of Britain’s Prince of Wales, they have won over 30 international and domestic awards for their work, including several Palladio Awards, Stanford White Awards, and Addison Mizner Medals.
Their monograph, American Houses: The Architecture of Fairfax & Sammons, was published by Rizzoli in 2006.
They stimulate academic and artistic development through support of continuing education.
Sammons, an internationally recognized expert in the field of architectural proportion and a board member of the American College of the Building Arts and of the Merchant’s House Museum, has taught at The Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture (now The Prince’s Foundation) in London, Pratt Institute in New York, and the University of Notre Dame in Rome.
Fairfax, who recently earned an Oxford Master’s Degree in Sustainable Urban Design, is a commissioner of the Landmarks Preservation Commission of the Town of Palm Beach.
“We remain committed to an architecture of tradition and innovation that offers solutions to contemporary issues,” she says.
