Reference letters

Tuesday, June 9, 1992

To Whom This May Concern:

This will introduce Scott Gilchrist, 1990 graduate of the post-professional masters degree programme in architecture at the University of Toronto.

I have known Scott Gilchrist since 1988 and have witnessed his performance in several capacities: as a graduate student, as a teaching assistant, and as a junior colleague responsible for establishing the Slide Collection in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture during his year of post-graduate practical experience in Canada. He is a gifted young architect of high intelligence, possessing a solid background in architectural research and scholarship. His masters dissertation on The Origin and Development of the Medieval Italian Communal Palace is a model of thoroughness and rigour and, I believe, one of the most distinguished pieces of work that our graduate programme has produced. His efforts as a teaching assistant, functioning in a variety of roles for a number of different courses and professors, were equally effective.

His performance as Acting Slide Curator for the period September 1990 to June 1991 and September 1991 to December 15, 1991, was exceptional. It immediately became clear that the systematic assembly of visual documentation on architecture is his purpose-given metier, and he has bent himself to the development of a coherent approach to its possibilities and problems with unstinting dedication.

I recommend him without reservation as a capable, energetic and personable young architect with a special expertise in the field of photographic documentation.

Yours sincerely,

Anthony Eardley
Dean and Chairman, Programme in Architecture
University of Toronto

5 June, 1992

To whom it may conern:

I have known Scott Gilchrist since he was admitted to the Master of Architecture degree programme at the University of Toronto in 1986 and I have followed his progress with considerable personal interest.

Scott acquitted himself very well in his thesis project and proved to be a person of tireless energy and enthusiasm. He served as a teaching assistant in the design studios from 1986 to 1990 and was popular with the students. He has traveled extensively in Europe, the USA, Canada, Mexico, Asia, and South America and has built up a fine personal collection of about 10,000 slides. With this as an incentive, he developed a unique and important system of cataloguing by computer, which he applied successfully to the slide library of the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Toronto. He has researched this subject exhaustively and examined the library system at a number of the major university schools in Canada and the USA.

He is now proposing to establish a company, Archivision, which will provide visual material and information on a wide range of subjects for the architectural, planning and design professions in the Americas and Europe. In addition to all this, he has been working as a research assistant with one of my senior colleagues, Professor Anthony da Sousa Santos, who is preparing a major work, "A Compendium of Roman Architecture: 1450-1750". This has involved research on the history of many major buildings in the Italian city and the provision of extensive illustrative material.

Scott is a person of integrity and considerable potential who can be relied on to fulfill his obligations conscientiously. I can recommend him to you with confidence.

Thomas Howarth, Ph.D., formerly Dean of the Faculty
Professor Emeritus
University of Toronto