Saint David’s Lower School Library.
to produce good architecture. There is almost no such thing as a complete architect, but you can find it in a combination of two or three architects who know how to work together. The last piece of advice is to allow for luck. Luck alone isn’t going to get you through a long and difficult career, but it can make a difference if the other pieces are in place. Chance truly favors the prepared mind, a state of enlightenment that only comes from doing your homework. That, in short form, covers the rigorous pursuit of excellence as it applies to architecture and authorship, or at least to my version of those activities, for I am well aware that the world is full of better architects and more accomplished writers. If I come up short in the spectrum of quality then I can only plead in my defense that the mission statement contains more than a single concept. Saint David’s wants its students to “fulfill their potential through rigorous academic pursuit, deliberate moral introspection, and critical analysis of ideas and issues.” But it affirms an equal place for “the classical tradition of balance,” and I like to think that my accomplishments reflect that goal to some degree as well.? M
Sam White is a partner of Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, where he oversees a New York City practice focusing on designs that introduce new interventions to historic settings. He is the co-author with Elizabeth White of Stanford White Architect, (Rizzoli, 2008), McKim, Mead & White: The Masterworks, and The Houses of McKim, Mead & White. His current book, Nice House, was published by Monacelli Press in 2010. Mr. White is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and an Academician of the National Academy of Design. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania.
32? •? Saint David’s Magazine