Joseph Wilkes, early green builing advocate, dies at 91

WASHINGTON - Joseph Wilkes, a Washington architect who had a taste for modern buildings and displayed a bent toward environmental awareness long before it became fashionable in architecture circles, died Aug. 18 in Rockville, Md., of prostate cancer. He was 91.

In the 1960s, Wilkes cofounded Wilkes & Faulkner, a small firm that specialized in designing contemporary homes. The firm also won institutional and commercial contracts, such as the National Zoo's Great Ape House, Small Mammal House and Reptile House buildings and alterations and additions to the embassies of Venezuela and Japan.

Wilkes taught at the University of Maryland at College Park from 1971 until 1985. He was the editor of the five-volume Encyclopedia of Architecture (1988) and the co-editor of "Architectural Acoustics" (1999).

He retired in the mid-1980s after moving from Montgomery County's Rock Creek Woods to Annapolis, Md., where he and his sons designed and built an energy-efficient, passive-solar home on the banks of the Severn River.

Wilkes was a native of Brooklyn and a graduate of Dartmouth College.

During World War II, he served in the Army Air Forces in North Africa, Sicily and France. After the war, he received a master's degree in architecture from Columbia University.

During the 1950s, Wilkes taught architecture at the University of Florida in Gainesville. There he designed a sleek, eco-friendly home for his family and oversaw its construction on a wooded lot.

In an effort to cut down as few trees as possible, he designed the home in the shape of the letter Y; he sought to complete the home with reused and recycled materials, such as plate-glass windows from a local cigar store.

As former president of the National Center for a Barrier-Free Environment, Wilkes worked on accessibility standards for the Americans With Disabilities Act. He was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

His wife of 44 years, the former Margaret Wilcoxson, died in 1990.