Jan Wampler has been coming to Block Island for more than 50 years and has owned a house there for 35 years. An architect and urban designer, he has designed projects in China, Turkey, India and the United States and has received numerous awards for his buildings. He has also written two books, “All Their Own” and “Open Notes for Young Architects: Search on the Journey.”
Jan has taught at MIT as a Professor of Architecture for 45 years and has recently been teaching at the University of South Florida for one semester each year.
While studying architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), he also painted, and he recently resumed painting, specializing in watercolors on Chinese rice paper. “I find painting very rewarding,” he says. “You know within minutes if it is good, but with architecture you have to wait at least three years to know if is good.”
He paints the sky, the land, and the “space between” the two, an idea he also explores in architecture. Some of his paintings are of known landscapes, mostly on Block Island. Others are of landscapes he remembers from his travels, and still others are of landscapes
