Hugh Newell Jacobsen


Hugh Newell Jacobsen is an American architect.

Education and early career

Hugh Newell Jacobsen was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on March 11, 1929. Educated at the University of Maryland, he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1951; he is an alumnus of . He also attended the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Jacobsen then earned his Bachelors Fine Arts from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1951 and a Master of Architecture from Yale University in 1955.
After finishing his formal education, Jacobsen briefly worked in New Canaan, Connecticut, apprenticing to Philip Johnson in 1955. Subsequently, Jacobsen worked for Keyes, Lethbridge and Condon in Washington, D.C..
In 1958, Jacobsen opened his eponymous Georgetown architectural firm and has maintained the small, private practice there since.

Later work

Jacobsen is widely known for his modern pavilion-based residences — composed of simple, gabled forms, rectangular in plan. Unlike other second-generation Modernist architects who revisited the iconic European houses of the 1920s or the American shingle style of the nineteenth century, Jacobsen drew inspiration from the vernacular architecture of the American homestead. His large but intimately scaled pavilions recall the barns, detached kitchens, and smokehouses — the outbuildings — of rural America.
Jacobsen designed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' Martha's Vineyard home in the early 1980s.
In 1988 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1992.
Jacobsen designed the “1998 Life Dream House, a promotion by Life Magazine where famed architects designed homes and plans were made publicly available.