Careers, Life, and Yale Thursday Show: The School of Architecture Building Project, Then and Now

Turner Brooks is a principal of Turner Brooks Architect in New Haven, Connecticut. The firm was first established by Turner in Starksboro, Vermont in 1972, initially designing (and often building) small houses and community facilities local to the area. The firm's work ranges from housing for homeless youth in New Haven, Connecticut to a new arts program facility, including a theater on the campus of the Burgundy Farm Country Day School in Alexandria, Virginia. 

As a professor adjunct of Architecture, Turner has been balancing teaching at Yale University with his practice for over thirty-five years. He has also taught at Carnegie Mellon University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Miami, Middlebury College, and the University of Vermont. He received BA and MArch degrees from Yale University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Rome (FAAR).and member of the CT AIA.

Andrus Burr, FAIA, received his BA from Williams in 1966, and his MArch from Yale in 1970. After Yale he worked with Peter Rose ’70 MArch in Montreal and later with Crissman and Solomon in Watertown, MA. In 1977 he married Ann McCallum ’80 MArch, and worked with his classmate Jim Righter ’70 MArch in New Haven while Ann got her degree. Following that, he worked at Kohn Pedersen Fox in New York, while Ann worked at Rafael Viñoly Architects. In 1983 they started their own practice in Williamstown, MA which continues to this day. They have two architect daughters, Alexandra ’08 MArch and Mary ’13 MArch. Alexandra married Allen Slamic ’07 MArch, and they practice in Brooklyn, NY as Allen Alex Architects. Mary married Ryan Salvatore ’11 MArch, and they practice in Darien, CT as Burr Salvatore Architects.

Tom Carey received a BA from Boston College in 1965 and an MArch from Yale in 1970 after taking time off to work in the Appalachian region of Southeastern Kentucky. He divided his first years after school between working for small Vermont architectural offices and doing construction with classmates Roc Caivano ’70 MArch, Robert Knight ’70 MArch, and Turner Brooks ’70 MArch, in Maine, Vermont, and Wisconsin among other places. In 1977 he went to Iran to work as a project architect for one phase of Ekbatan - a massive new town project near Tehran. Forced out during the revolution against the Shah, he returned to New York where he worked for Gruzen and Partners before again going overseas to work for Favre et Guth, S.A. in Geneva, Switzerland. Upon his return to the U.S., he worked as an architect in Cambridge, MA before forming Brooks and Carey Architects with Turner Brooks. He maintained that office and its successor office, Thomas Carey Architect in Boston until recently. He is now back to doing carpentry and building a family house in the mountains of New Hampshire. He has two brilliant daughters, Naoka and Rachel whose accomplishments in juvenile justice and writing/filmmaking respectively deserve their own biography. 

Adam Hopfner is the founder of Hopfner Studio, a design-build practice based in New Haven. He has taught at the Yale School of Architecture for twenty years, where he is Director of the Jim Vlock Building Project. He received a BA from Bowdoin College and an MArch from Yale University.

Rhea Schmid received her BA from Barnard College in 2015 and completed her MArch at Yale School of Architecture in 2020, where she was a Teaching Fellow for the Building Project. In hopes of cultivating a more holistic approach and understanding of design, where the built world meets the planted one, she is currently working at Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architects.