Our Architects have many passions, including sailing.

Captain Greg Andoll, Architectural Associate at PBA, has been drawn to the sea ever since he skipped school to hang out at the docks of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad to read a dog-eared copy of Moby Dick. Occasionally looking up, he marveled as the last of the sail-powered cargo ships took on “provisions” to destinations unknown. Over the years, that interest in sailboats eventually merged with his interest in architecture.

“Sailboats are fundamentally utilitarian. Sails, spars, shrouds, hull, mast, boom, rudder, all work together for one purpose: to master the wind to get from A to B. Yet, sailboats are things of stunning beauty. That is why artists paint them.” So too, Greg realized were the buildings that he most admired. “From Chartres where the “function” was to capture light; to indigenous adobe dwellings, where the function was to keep cool, I learned that beauty is not ornament, decoration or artifice. It is the artful, mindful and nuanced response to function.”

Not content to admire sailboats from the hard, Greg joined a local sailing club, but soon tired of puttering around in local waters. He earned his US Coast Guard Captain’s license and began his offshore sailing career by delivering yachts world-wide. He has since logged over 25 k nautical miles of open ocean sailing which included the Caribbean, the Atlantic coast from Florida to Nova Scotia, the English Channel, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, all the while admiring those beautiful sails, stiff as stone, as they silently do their work.

Learn more about Greg Andoll here.