JACK BURTON

M.Arch. May 2025
Jack Burton is a recent Master of Architecture graduate from the University of Utah whose work explores the intersections of landscape, labor relations, and aesthetics, with a particular interest in the picturesque and the role vernacular architecture played in the eighteenth-century art movement. Jack’s design philosophy is established in context, craft, and community. His current research looks at contemporary models of healthy aging, with a focus on how gardening and cultivation can support autonomy, well-being, and social connection later in life. Through his work, Jack continues to explore how architecture can nurture both people and place.

Jack came to his architecture studies with an already established foundation of drafting, managing BIM models, and seeing projects through construction administration. His background gave him the freedom to explore conceptual and abstract skills during his time at the University of Utah’s School of Architecture while remaining grounded in established construction methodologies. Jack understands the balance in architecture between the client's wants and the community's needs and does not shy away from seeking one in the other.

 A native of Ringwood in the United Kingdom, Jack moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, at the age of 18 to pursue a degree in Urban Ecology. After graduating in 2019, he worked for Woodbury Corporation as an Architectural Designer before returning to school in 2022 to complete a graduate degree in Architecture. Jack enjoys spending his free time improving skills he finds comfort in, such as baking loaves of sourdough and jogging through Utah scenery.


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RE/FRAMING BRITISH LAND TENURE
FALL 2024 / SPRING 2025


Affordable Housing and Community Agriculture

20,000 Total Square Feet

Thatch and timber structural system with an Aluminum and Glass Greenhouse

The foundational research behind the following project examines the reciprocal dialogue between art and its potential for real-world implications. Is there a relationship between the two if what we perceive from art is entirely subjective? Or, on the other hand, are they as disconnected as some modern aestheticians have claimed them to be?
The architecture that follows this inquiry by no means tries to answer these complex and imprecise questions definitively. Instead, the proposal explores how these discussions evolved in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain, focusing on the broad social practices justified in pursuit of the “picturesque.” Explored through architecture, landscape painting, and literature, the popularity of picturesque aesthetics played a significant role in diminishing the capacity for art to be responsible for its tangible effect on the physical world.

However, during this philosophical preoccupation with the picturesque, broad changes to the distribution of the landscapes depicted by the art movement arose. Public and private acts of enclosure continually restricted access to rural Britain in favor of the aristocratic ruling class, permitting them to strip away communal rights (frequently relied upon for subsistence) from approximately sixty percent of arable British farmland. A significant portion of the rest was already held and managed by the same nobility. As attested by John Barrell, a motive behind the reformation of land ownership “was precisely to make the laboring poor more dependent on their employers, and more tractable to their discipline.” By exploring how picturesque aesthetics perpetuated this period of enclosure, we can shed some light on the questions that started this line of research. While picturesqueness was historically employed to justify enclosure, to what extent can these carefully curated landscapes work in a counter direction, and instead revise Britain’s dependence on absolute private land tenure?




The architectural component of this project attempts this revision (back towards more communal distributions of land) by reframing its contextual landscapes, making community contribution its most salient feature. The program serves as an incubator that facilitates a shared reinvestment into common land, a building where crops and livestock can start their growth before being relocated to the fragments of the commons upon its improvement. The building’s program, therefore, encompasses large publicly accessible greenhouses and shared facilities for the on-site farm operation, alongside amenities that aid the preparation and processing for those who grow produce locally. The location of this
project is a small rural village on the south coast of the UK, whose regional agriculture was significantly disrupted by acts of enclosure, and this specific site lies centrally in the many hundreds of acres still owned by the manor house. The building itself is two stories, matching the village context and is approximately fifteen thousand square feet (the only local building larger than this is the manor house that presides over the village). This part of the UK is in a mild climate zone (CFb Köppen classification), often experiencing warm winds and an abundance of rainfall via the Atlantic Gulf Stream.
Energy use for code standard assemblies and no solar strategies.

Total EUI: 63 kBtu/sf/y
Energy use for proposed R-35 assemblies and optimized solar strategies.

Total EUI: 15 kBtu/sf/y


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