Lewis Clarke Collection Biography
Lewis James Clarke was born in Carlton, Nottingham, England on 10 March 1927. After service in the British Royal Engineers at the end of World War II, he completed his Masters in Architecture at the University of Leicester and his Masters in Landscape Design from Kings College, University of Durham. He received a Fulbright Scholarship and a Smith-Mundt Award to attend Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in landscape architecture and completed the program in one year to graduate in 1952.
In the fall of 1952, Henry L. Kamphoefner, founding dean of the North Carolina State College School of Design (SOD), hired Clarke to teach architecture and landscape architecture. He remained a faculty professor until 1968. In addition to teaching at SOD, Clarke taught at the University of Virginia, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, University of Toronto, Michigan State University, Louisiana State University, and the University of California at Berkeley.
Clarke’s firm, Lewis Clarke Associates (LCA), formally opened in 1968. Over the years the firm’s designs received excellence awards from the American Society of Landscape Architecture, the American Institute of Architects, Progressive Architecture, and the American Nurserymen Association. LCA’s work includes community colleges in North Carolina and Virginia, early enclosed malls, and master plans for landmark projects such as the Research Triangle Institute; Saint Andrews College, Laurinburg, North Carolina; and the North Carolina Zoological Park in Asheboro. LCA also originated a substantial number of innovations in the area of early residential resort master planning. Signature works include Palmetto Dunes, Hilton Head Island; Carolina Trace, Sanford, North Carolina; and Ford’s Colony, Williamsburg, Virginia. In 1980, Clarke was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (FASLA). He is an associate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA). In 2000, he retired from active practice.