THE OFFICE of Peter W. Charapko is a diversified practice which has completed a broad range of projects in New york and the region.
It was founded in Manhattan in 1979 and has worked with private and public clients in institutional, residential and commercial fields. Emphasis is placed upon a close working relationship between client and architect. This allows a comprehensive approach: the project team identifies and resolves specific requirements of building, context and culture, from planning stage to sign-off.
The practice has been privileged to benefit from repeat invitations in these fields and this continuity has served well both the agencies and the firm in the process and finished works. The projects have the full involvement of the principal throughout the work, and additional architectural consultants and multi-disciplined engineering firms comprise a typical professional team.
PETER CHARAPKO received a Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University, School of Architecture and Urban Planning. His undergraduate studies, also at Princeton, were in Sociology and Urban Planning.
On the Senior Board of WPRB-FM, Princeton Broadcasting
Service, Inc., in 1970, he served as Chief Announcer.
He also designed graphics for station promotion. (Program schedule cover for subscribers.)
During his second month of graduate studies he met architect Louis I. Kahn after he delivered a lecture on campus about the Salk Foundation building. At Mitchell/Giurgola Architects he later worked on preliminary designs for the entrance plaza.
Charapko's undergraduate thesis surveyed "The Neighborhood Unit," stemming from Clarence Perry's 1930 proposals, and sought a "social/spatial" nexus. A Masters thesis explored typology formally and historically, and was accompanied with designs for a transportation interchange in Trenton, New Jersey.
As a graduate teaching assistant, Peter Charapko taught with Robert L Geddes, Dean, in the introductory course and Michael Graves, in his "Visual Studies in Architecture"
At Princeton he was a member of The People's Workshop, a community design group which planned projects, under auspices of the School and a registered architect, for Casa del Barrio community center in Perth Amboy and which advocated State highway redesign/modification and neighborhood design in Trenton's South Ward. Prior to opening his own practice he was employed as a graduate architect with Mitchell/Giurgola Architects New York, I.M. Pei and Partners, and architect with Poor, Swanke, Hayden and Connell.
For ten years he served as architecture lecturer in New York University's Department of History. Charapko is licensed to practice architecture in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.