Home/Books/Architecture

Christopher Knight

Christopher Knight was born in 1943 and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he realized there must be more to life than that. He began messing with boats at age 2 and taking photographs at age l3. While attending Dartmouth College he combined these interests by paddling a kayak with his brother from Alaska to Seattle and photographing the trip. In l964 he paddled a canoe down the Danube River with a group of other students, visiting 7 countries and photographing a 47 page article for National Geographic. This lucky break began a career in photography which resulted in stories for the Geographic on Alaska, Japan, and Rumania plus numerous other magazine articles.

After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Dartmouth, he studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, receiving a Master of Architecture degree in 1969. Architecture remained mostly a hobby practiced on the family until 2000, when a house he designed was completed on Cranberry Island in Maine. Since then he has done a number of home and renovation designs.

In l971 he married Kathryn Lasky, creating a happy home and a writer-photographer team. Their 30 foot ketch LEUCOTHEA became the vehicle for a series of sailing voyages including two crossings of the Atlantic, and cruising in Scandinavia, inland Europe via the canals, the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean. Kathy wrote l8 articles for Sail Magazine and the book Atlantic Circle, which used his photographs. Eighteen of Kathy's non-fiction children's books have been illustrated with his photographs. Between books and voyages, they managed to have two children, Max and Meribah.

Looking for a way to combine the fun of photography with the leisurely design elements of architecture, he decided to go into documentary film production and formed The New Film Company in l969. This company has produced films ranging from a theatrical feature starring Joan Baez to television programs on ageing, singlehanded sailing, the reintroduction of bald eagles, a solo canoe voyage to the Arctic Ocean, and "Yankee in Kamchatka", the story of an expedition to Siberia. Many of the recent films appeared on the PBS Adventure and Nova series.

BOATWORKS, a boating series for PBS, has been a big project. The series began broadcast in April of 1997, and received high ratings in most PBS markets.

The latest addition to the family is a lovely 48 foot sailboat named ALICE. She will help Kathy and Chris get over empty nest now that Max is working in New York and Meribah is a journalist in Chicago. Check out Adventures with ALICE on this website.

Last modified: January 31, 2011