Robert Foulkes

I grew up on the fruit growing shores of Lake Michigan, part of a large extended family of farmers.  I must have gained an appreciation of the vernacular buildings during these early years. I roofed houses and repaired porches during college years in Ann Arbor and started a construction company in 1975 that became White Oak Timber Frame Ltd. I returned to a university in 1989 to study Urban Planning and Policy after having established a working relation with Sam Marts in Chicago. My interests have all melded in my work history, community planning, forestry, woodworking.

The past ten years have brought opportunities to recycle buildings working with the National Park Service and private projects to extend the walkable urban patterns in small towns and to teach some of what I have learned to architecture students at Andrews University and to others at hands on “workcamps” from northern New Hampshire to southern Alabama. My interest in energy efficient building, born in the 1970s, continues.