Craig Barton

A.B. Brown University;
B.F.A. The School of Visual Arts;
M.Arch. Columbia University;
Harvard University, Graduate School of Design

Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Architecture & Landscape Architecture

Craig Barton is an associate professor and urban design and the Director of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Virginia. Prior to this appointment Mr. Barton was a member of the faculty at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he directed the New York/Paris Program. Mr. Barton was Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and is currently a Faculty Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Center of the Study of Local Knowledge.

Through his practice, research, and teaching Mr. Barton investigates issues of cultural and historical preservation and their interpretation through architectural and urban design. Much of his practice focuses on assisting African-American communities to preserve and interpret their significant cultural resources and to utilize them to stimulate community development.

He is the editor of the anthology, Sites of Memory: Perspectives on Architecture and Race, published by Princeton Architectural Press in March of 2001. In addition he has contributed essays and projects to a number of publications including, Invisibility upon the Land for the Your Town Mississippi Delta, anthology published by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the essay, If the Walls Could Talk, Shotguns 2001, edited by David Brown and William Williams.

Mr. Barton is a founding principal in the architectural firm RBGC Associates, located in Charlottesville, Virginia.. Some of the firm’s recent projects include; a master plan for the town of Bayview, a historic African-American community on Virginia’s Eastern Shore; the design and preservation of 19th century railway sheds in Charleston, SC to accommodate exhibition and administrative space for the Philip Simmons Foundation, an organization which supports and promotes the work of African-American craftsman like Mr. Simmons a noted Charleston blacksmith; and the design of a museum and visitors center in Selma, AL for the National Voting Rights Museum, part of the National Park Services National Voting Historic Trail, and the adaptive re-use former Rosenwald schools in the Virginia including the Greensville County Training School in Emporia, VA and the Scrabble School in Rappahannock County VA.