Roger K. Lewis, FAIA
Professor Emeritus

Office:     |    Phone: 202-363-0220    |    Email

B. Arch., 1964, MIT; M. Arch., 1967; Peace Corps Volunteer Architect, 1964-66, Tunisia.

EDUCATOR

A member of the faculty since 1968, Professor Lewis helped start and subsequently nurture the University of Maryland's new School of Architecture, established by the University in 1967. During the School's early years, in addition to teaching design, he initiated and taught two seminal courses: "Introduction to the Built Environment" (ARCH 170), a wide-ranging survey of architecture and urban design fundamentals for freshmen and sophomores; and "Economic Determinants in Architecture," an elective for advanced architectural students focused on the real estate development process. ARCH 170 continues to be a popular course taken by hundreds of students annually from across the university campus as well as by pre-architecture majors. He was instrumental in helping transform the original professional curriculum from a 5-year, B. Architecture program to a graduate-level M. Architecture program. Currently Professor Lewis teaches graduate and undergraduate design studios, including the award-winning, nationally recognized Comprehensive Design Studio, plus courses in drawing, theory and professional practice. He also directs periodically the master's thesis research seminar and master's thesis studio.

During the summer of 1971, accompanying the late Charles Moore, distinguished visiting Kea Professor, and Dean John Hill, he led 17 students - the School's first graduating class - on a five-week study tour of Western Europe, Turkey and Tunisia, the School's first summer study abroad program. In 1996, in collaboration with Professor Marie Howland, Director of the Urban Studies program, and Professor Matthew Bell, Professor Lewis directed a group of American architecture and urban planning students, along with Russian architecture students, engaged in the School's first-ever program in St. Petersburg, Russia. Studying the unique development problems facing post-Soviet Russia, the students generated a redevelopment plan for a large block in the heart of the historic city center. In 2003, Professor Lewis returned to Russia with Professor Howland and Professor Brooke Wortham to teach in the School's second study abroad program in St. Petersburg.

DESIGN & PLANNING PRACTITIONER

Professor Lewis has always combined teaching and practice, believing that one informs and energizes the other. His experience as a practitioner began in the Peace Corps in Tunisia, where he was an architect for the Ministry of Public Works and was responsible for designing more than 30 government-financed projects, over half of which were built. These included municipal auditoriums, shopping facilities, schools, a boy scout camp, a movie theater, a hotel, a historic mosque renovation, and public gardens.

Immediately after he began teaching, he established his architecture and planning firm based in Washington, DC. Since 1969, he has designed award-winning private residences, low-income and elderly housing as well as market-rate housing, community buildings, public and private recreational facilities, art centers, commercial structures and schools. His firm has prepared master plans and design guidelines for new communities or for the expansion of existing communities, both in the eastern United States and abroad. Starting with the Peace Corps and throughout his subsequent career as a practitioner, Professor Lewis has approached each project as a fresh design challenge and opportunity driven by unique circumstances of time and place, of technology and resources, of client and user needs, and of cultural and historical context. Rather than exhibiting a particular aesthetic agenda or repeatedly using a personally expressive architectu