Christopher Miller PhD, '14

Biography

Christopher C. Miller teaches and researches urbanism, architectural/urban design, and architecture history/theory.

For patrons, architects, and makers, Miller’s current project, Bella Città, recasts the first architectural treatise of the Renaissance along three lines that are hoped to speak to the present. In the midst and aftermath of republican experiments in northern Italian cities, the treatise-writer Alberti adopted a contemporary ideal of a political culture that was distinct from autocratic and clan regimes; for this, he theorizes an architectural representation of civic, or shared-rule, polity. Perhaps current democracies can be supported by buildings made to speak of an inter-dependent web of essential institutions. Secondly, Alberti conceived architectural components as integral to scales of greater scope and as resonating synchronically and diachronically in anticipation of the mid-twentieth-century interest in urban context. Finally, our contemporary attention to affectivity is Alberti’s theorizing of architecture as rhetorical: prudential, sensate judgment gauging the fittedness of ornament to circumstance and calling to our uniquely human vision of beauty.

In an ongoing effort, Miller assists leaders of Classical Christian schools in considering how their buildings and campuses, like analogies of a classical education, can cultivate flourishing formation in their learning communities. While at Glavé & Holmes Architecture, Richmond, Virginia, Miller administrated and contributed to master plans for Heritage Classical Academy, Covenant School, and Heritage Preparatory School. Recently, he has advised The Geneva School, Casselberry, Florida, and consulted in a campus master plan charrette for Coram Deo Academy, Flower Mound, Texas.

At Glavé & Holmes Architecture, Richmond Virginia, Miller collaborated in the neighborhood design and Form-Based Code for Holy Family Shire, Fall River Wisconsin, in the Form-Based Code concept for mixed-use Rountrey - North of Powhite, Richmond, and in the Piedmont proposal for the University of Virginia Affordable Housing Initiative He managed the Merchants Square Extension Report for Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg.

Consulting has included live online video instruction, Creating Places of Beauty and Meaning for People, over two years to Synergine Group, Auckland, NZ, in support of their anticipated demonstration city transformation projects for the United Nations. For Michael Watkins Architect, Miller provided “Research for Visual Catalog of Place Types for Small House Urbanism” that includes Belgian godshuizen and Dutch hofjes. He developed a meeting hall design for Norton Commons.

He has contributed to charrettes: Coram Deo Academy, with Michael Watkins Architect, 2026; Century Project, Pike Road, Alabama, with CityBuilding Partnership, 2019; Traditional Architecture Summer School charrettes in Navarre, Marvao, and Cantabria, 2017-2019; Tuckahoe Neighborhood Charrette, Richmond Virginia, with Third Church, Michael Watkins Architect, and Judson students, 2017; Villa Jericó, Honduras, 2015; Lakeside Charrette, Smith Lake, Alabama with Dover, Kohl, and Partners and Michael Watkins Architect, 2014; Lafayette Charrette, Notre Dame School of Architecture Graduate Urban Design, 2013; East State Design District Workshop, Rockford Illinois with Rock River Development Partnership, Live Work Learn Play, and Judson students 2010; the Judson College Quincy Charrette, with the Great River Economic Foundation, 2005; and the Wealthy-Jefferson Redevelopment Initiative, Grand Rapids Michigan, with the Inner City Christian Federation, 2002.

Presentations have included these: Baylor’s Symposium on Faith and Culture on Stewardship of Creation (2018), a featured presentation (Stewarding Our Places and Buildings. I.Managing our Goods: Material Resources and Public Health; II.Supporting Our Local Economies; III.Imaging Here and Ultimately the City of God: Considering Civitas a Sacred Endowment); and at the Congress for the New Urbanism (2010), “Visualizing Morphological Conditions for Pedestrian Connectivity.”

Miller was the first architecture program director at Benedictine College. For twenty years at Judson, he taught upper-level and graduate architecture/urbanism studios as well as courses on the Architecture of the City (originating from William Carroll Westfall’s History of Urban Form course at the University of Virginia) and Conviviality in Architecture (inspired by Illich’s Tools for Conviviality). Miller’s work, and that of his students, has been recognized by the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Congress for the New Urbanism Illinois Chapter, the Congress for the New Urbanism-Members Christian Caucus International Faith & Urban Design Award, and the Institute for Classical Architecture and Art Chicago Chapter for projects in Bath (UK), Gowanus (Brooklyn NY), Lafayette (LA), Orwigsburg (PA), Richmond (VA), Winchester (UK), and Winson Green (Birmingham UK).

He is an amateur plein air watercolorist.