Texas Design Week Houston — Bobby McAlpine, Poetry in Motion
Bobby McAlpine Appears at Texas Design Week Houston Wednesday, May 3 at David Sutherland
BY Caitlin Hsu // 04.27.23A waterfront house designed by McAlpine that's lit like a lantern at night. (Photo by Simon Upton)
Self-described as a fierce romantic, architect Bobby McAlpine founded his firm, McAlpine, 40 years ago and has designed homes, private chapels, a rehabilitated town, restaurants, and follies across the country for passionate clients. His calling cards are a diverse array of traditional styles and regional vernaculars drawing from Elizabethan and Dutch to colonial Caribbean and agrarian American. In his third book, McAlpine: Romantic Modernism, published late March 2023 by Rizzoli, he describes classicism and modernism as the silver and gold crayons in the box of 64 colors that he’s held back yet wanted to use for so long.
“Under the heading of romanticism,” he says, “I can claim them as my medium to empower all else I’ve learned along the way. Pure classicism and modernism are daunting in their dogma. When you throw the cloak of romanticism over them, they become more subtle and even more powerful.”
In this new body of work, McAlpine embraces his long-coveted silver and gold crayons, creating houses that “are not the gentlest, but rather those that possess the most voltage. This work is about going further than poetry.” The book opens with Bobby McAlpine’s own newly designed home, while other projects include a neoclassical pavilion by the sea in the Bahamas, a masonry dwelling in the rolling hills of Virginia, and a quintessential American country house in Tennessee.
CV: With offices in Atlanta, Nashville, New York, and Montgomery, the firm has been listed on the AD100 and Elle Decor A List, and projects have been published in Veranda, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, and House Beautiful. McAlpine’s furniture line, McAlpine House, is available in showrooms nationwide.
“In modernism, there is freethinking rebellion.”
—Bobby McAlpine
What, When, Where
Bobby McAlpine will speak and sign his new book Wednesday, May 3, at Decorative Center Houston 1st Floor Gallery, reception at David Sutherland Showroom, 5120 Woodway. Texas Design Week Houston is a ticketed event. For tickets and information go to TexasDesignWeek.com.