Mark Wilson Jones has achieved distinction as an architect, architectural historian and teacher. He took his architecture degree at the University of Cambridge before completing his training at the then Polytechnic of Central London (where the tutors included Demetri Porphyrios). After stints getting practical experience as a site engineer in London and designing under the Geoffrey Bawa in Sri Lanka, Mark won the Rome Prize in Architecture at the British School at Rome. This led to full immersion in ancient and early modern architecture, a passion for measuring by hand and analysing historic design and proportions, and a stream of scholarly discoveries on buildings ranging from Bramante’s Tempietto to the Pantheon.
The 1990s saw Mark juggling research and practice both in London (including two major but unbuilt masterplans for sites in northern England) and Rome, where he taught at the University of Notre Dame. History and research came to be all-consuming, resulting in joining the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the University of Bath in 2000.
Mark is a world authority on the classical columnar orders, especially their source in antiquity. He has had a long record of funding awards, journal publications and lecturing across Europe and the USA. His Principles of Roman Architecture is unique in being awarded both the UK’s main architecture book prizes: the Banister Fletcher Prize (RIBA) and the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion (Society of Architectural Historians, GB). The Pantheon in Rome from Antiquity to the Present and Origins of Classical Architecture are other significant books. He has received commissions from the American Academy in Rome and the World Monuments Fund, and in the UK has served for the Bath Preservation Trust on their planning committee and as trustee, and he evaluates university research in the built environment for the UK Government through the ‘REF 2021’ process. Mark was recognized with an award in 2020 for his contribution to teaching by the Traditional Architecture Group, of which he recently became Chair.
In 2016 Mark’s work came full circle with a return to design work, and the foundation of Apollodorus Architecture to lead a major project inspired by Roman precedent, one without parallel in recent times save for the Getty Villa built at Malibu in the 1970s. By contrast, however, the current endeavour does not replicate, and it enjoys the benefit of fine materials such as marble and bronze. Currently under construction in the Caribbean, the complex offers singular opportunities to apply insights derived from the study of the past, while harnessing drawing by hand and craft skills to the latest digital technology in the cause of moving the classical tradition forward. The practice is also engaged on architectural decoration and wall painting, and is developing work in the UK.
Contact
Email: mark@apollodorus.uk
Telephone: + 44 776 357 2846
Website: http://www.apollodorus.uk/
