MARI ARHITECTI

Robert Adam
(b. Kirkcaldy, Fife 1728; d. London, England 1792)
Robert Adam was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife in 1728. Often considered Scotland's most famous architect, Adam became a leader of classical revival in England for both architecture and interior decoration. His designs are particularly notable for their lavish use of color.
Robert Adam was an eclectic who depended as much on good business sense as on his personal design innovations. His designs incorporated light, color, and detailed ornamentation. To generate his style he adapted motifs from classical antiquity, Italian, French and Renaissance influences and abstracted them into a personal style.
Adam's most unusual designs were based on Etruscan vase decorations. The Etruscan Dressing Room at Osterley Park, Middlesex (1775-1776) is the only substantial survivor of eight such designs.
Adam died in London in 1792.
ReferencesDennis Sharp. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991. ISBN 0-8230-2539-X. NA40.I45. p 11.


Green Park Ranger's House Commentary
“The Adams designed one small but notable building in central London at this period: the Deputy-Ranger’s Lodge in Green Park, on Piccadily : this was not a gardener’s cottage, but a small stately house, since the office was a royal gift, and its then occupier, Colonal Lord Archibald Montgomerier, was to succeed to his Earldom of Eglinton just after the house was finished.
“It is a rectangular block, into which a cylinder is inserted by two-thirds of its diameter, so that the projecting third makes one of those segmental curves much favoured by the Adams. In it are a dining-room below and a drawing-room above. The exterior is relatively low, of two storeys. The lower is a plain basement: its heaviness is only indicated by the deep recession fo the three windows in the cylinder-projection, while the upper has a Doric order, something of a rarity in Adam exteriors, perhaps thought appropriate to the house of a deputy-keeper.…”








Alvar Aalto
(b. Kuortane, Finland 1898; d. Helsinki, Finland 1976)
Alvar Aalto was born in Kuortane, Finland in 1898, the son of a surveyor. He graduated with honors from Helsinki Polytechnic in 1921 after which he opened his own practice. He held the position of Professor of Architecture at MIT 1946 to 1948, and was President of the Academy of Finland 1963-68.
Although his early work borrowed from the neoclassic movement, he eventually adapted the symbolism and functionalism of the Modern Movement to generate his plans and forms. Aalto's mature work embodies a unique functionalist/expressionist and humane style, successfully applied to libraries, civic centers, churches, housing, etc.
A synthesis of rational with intuitive design principles allowed Aalto to create a long series of functional yet non-reductionist buildings. Alvar Aalto generated a style of functionalism which avoided romantic excess and neoclassical monotony. Although Aalto borrowed from the International Style, he utilized texture, color, and structure in creative new ways. He refined the generic examples of modern architecture that existed in most of Europe and recreated them into a new Finnish architecture. Aalto's designs were particularly significant because of their response to site, material and form.
Aalto generated a large body of work in Germany, America, and Sweden. Often at work on multiple projects, he tended to intermingle ideas and details within his work. The spectrum of Aalto's work exhibits a sensual detailing that separates him from most of his contemporaries.
Aalto was a master of form and planning, as well as of details that relate a building successfully to its users. His buildings have provided renewed inspiration in the face of widespread disillusionment with high modernism on one hand, and post-modernism on the other.
Aalto died in Helsinki in May 1976.
Details
Winner of the Sonning Prize, 1962







Steffen Ahrends
(b. Berlin, Germany 1907; d. Spain, November 1992)
Steffen Ahrends was born in Berlin, Germany in 1907. He studied architecture at the University of Berlin-Charlottenburg and at the Bauhochschule in Weimar after which he joined his father's architectural office in Berlin. In 1931 he joined the Ernst May Group in Moscow but quickly returned to his father's studio where he remained until 1936 when he emigrated to South Africa and established an office in Johannesburg. He has worked with several partners since that time.
Ahrends' work can be placed into two categories; one rational and the other romantic. He exhibits a rational attitude towards his large collective use buildings for which he borrowed extensively from the International Style. These buildings exhibit high technology with a regional flavor. Ahrends designs his residential buildings with a more romantic attitude which blends industrial technology with the more traditional materials of Gothic, baroque and vernacular architecture.
Ahrends designs his buildings based on client needs, site-constraints, and climatic conditions. While he uses more industrial materials for his larger buildings, he incorporates natural finishes and materials into most of his residential work. His sensitive handling of space, light and form have made him one of the most influential architects within Africa.
ReferencesMuriel Emmanuel. Contemporary Architects. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980. ISBN 0-312-16635-4. NA 680-C625. p15-16.




Leon Battista Alberti
(b. Genoa, Italy 1404; d. Rome 1472)
Leon Battista Alberti was born in Genoa in 1404. The first theorist of Humanist art, Alberti belonged to an important Florentine family that had been exiled from Florence since 1387. When the family returned to the city in 1429 Alberti gained access to the city's great architecture and art which he studied extensively. Well-versed in Latin and Greek, Alberti never received a formal architectural education. His architectural ideas were the product of his own studies and research.
Alberti's two main architectural writings are "De Pictura" (1435), in which he emphatically declares the importance of painting as a base for architecture and "De Re Aedificatoria" (1450) his theoretical masterpiece. Like Vitruvius's "Ten Books on Architecture", "De Re Aedificatoria" was subdivided into ten books. Unlike Vitruvius's book, Alberti's told architects how buildings should be built, not how they were built. "De Re Aedificatoria" remained the classic treatise on architecture from the sixteenth century until the eighteenth century.
The unfinished Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini (1450) was the first building that Alberti designed and attempted to build based on his architectural principals. Up to that point Alberti's architectural experience was purely theoretic. The facade of Santa Maria Novella (1458-71) is considered his greatest achievement since it allows the pre-existing and newly added parts of the building to merge into a clear statement of his new principles.
Alberti died in Rome in 1472.








Galeazzo Alessi
(b. Perugia, Italy 1512; d. 1572)
Although born in Perugia in 1512, Galeazzo Alessi became the leading architect of the mid-sixteenth century in Genoa and Milan. Alessi seems to have been most highly influenced by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Baldassare Peruzzi, although he was also influenced by Michelangelo.
Alessi generated three separate stylistic groups of work which correspond to his activities in Perugia, Genoa, and Milan respectively. For each group he exhibited a characteristic reduction of basic architectural units into simple geometric forms. He created designs that depended on a refined coordination of parts within the whole and on the use of distinct structural units.
Even when Alessi included dense ornamentation within his buildings, the structural elements remained clearly articulated. He favored the use of paired columns or pilasters set on pedestals. He generally created a rhythm with his facades using alternating window pediments. In later works, Alessi developed a geometric, tapering order enunciated by rounded arches.
Allessi's style permeated the residences of the Genoese aristocracy. His ornate decoration revived the Lombard tradition which had been suppressed earlier in the century by Bramante and his followers.
Alessi died in 1572.



Christopher Alexander
(b. Vienna, Austria 1936)
Cristopher Alexander was born in Vienna, Austria in 1936. He graduated with degrees in mathematics and architecture from Cambridge University and with a Ph.d in Architecture from Harvard University. For his doctoral dissertation, Alexander developed a computer program that attempted to analyze and create new environments based on logical programmatic analysis. This interest in creating new environments would mark all of his future works.
Eventually his confidence in mathematical methods as a basis for better design declined and he utilized empirical research to create patterns. Disenchanted with computer-driven design, but more than ever interested in what made certain places work both spatially and psychologically, Alexander developed a theory of "fit" in terms of what he called "patterns". This theory suggested a means for creating successful places that blended application of logic with collective experience.
Embodied in the books "A Pattern Language" and "The Oregon Experiment", pattern theory inspired many, but also failed to consistently lead to beautiful buildings. In the late 1980's Alexander started to develop a further theoretical basis for good design based on a careful definition of "wholeness", or a kind of deep and abiding beauty.
Although most of his buildings have effectively supported his theories, Alexander has mainly influenced the architectural profession through his writings and teaching rather than through his completed buildings. Due to a softening in his stance, his critics now accuse him of embracing ornamentation and craft at the expense of modern technology.





William Van Alen
(b. Brooklyn, New York 1883; d. 1954)
William Van Alen was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1883. While he attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, he worked in the office of Clarence True. He also worked for several firms in New York, before he won the 1908 Lloyd Warren Fellowship which allowed him to study in Europe. In Paris, Van Alen studied in the atelier of Victor Laloux at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
In 1911, Van Alen returned to New York, where he formed a partnership with H. Craig Severance. The partnership became known for its distinctive multistory commercial structures which abandoned the historic formula of base, shaft, and capital. The partnership dissolved around 1925 and Van Alen continued to practice on his own in New York.
Van Alen is best known for his design of the Chrysler Building, often praised as the greatest example of Art Deco style skyscrapers and the perfect monument to American capitalism. Although the Chrysler Building is now highly regarded, his career suffered after its completion due to accusactions made against him by the powerful client, William P. Chrysler. He died in 1954.






Tadao Ando
(b. Osaka, Japan 1941)
Tadao Ando was born in Osaka, Japan in 1941. Unlike most contemporary architects, Ando did not receive any formal architectural schooling. Instead, he trained himself by reading and traveling extensively through Africa, Europe, and the United States. In 1970 he established Tadao Ando Architect & Associates.
Ando rejects the rampant consumerism visible within much of today's architecture. He responds both sensitively and critically to the chaotic Japanese urban environment, but maintains a connection to the landscape. Although Ando rejects cultural fads, he uses materials and forms to incorporate the materialism of modern society into his architecture. Accordingly, his concrete and glass buildings reflect, the modern progress underway in both Japan and the world.
In opposition to traditional Japanese architecture, Ando creates spaces of enclosure rather than openness. He uses walls to establish a human zone and to counter the monotony of commercial architecture. On the exterior, the wall deflects the surrounding urban chaos, while on the interior it encloses a private space.
Ando developed a radically new architecture characterized by the use of unfinished reinforced concrete structures. Using a geometric simplicity which reveals a subtlety and richness in spatial articulation, Ando has generated an architecture that shares the serenity and clarity that characterize traditional Japanese architecture.











John Andrews
(b. Sydney, Australia 1933)
John Andrews was born in Sydney, Australia in 1933. He graduated from the University of Sydney in 1956. One year later he entered the masters of architecture program at Harvard University. After he graduated, Andrews worked with John Parkin and Don Mills in Toronto until 1962 when he established John Andrews Architects in Toronto. He expanded to Sydney in 1972 at which time he renamed the firm John Andrews International Pty. Ltd.
In his architecture, Andrews shows more concern with solving specific site and programmatic requirements than with establishing a distinctive style. He develops the building and site according to climatic conditions and user needs. With a rational approach that emphasizes circulation and user interaction, Andrews creates user friendly environments.
Because he stresses the functional identity of his architecture, Andrews uses a design process that contrasts sharply with the more romantic architecture generated by his countrymen during the same period.
As an architect, Andrews has not been compelled to follow any particular tradition. His international practice and absence from Australia during his formative years has set him apart from his contemporaries.. He has developed his own approach to architecture after a series of experiments. His understanding of the climatic, social, economic and constructional influence on architecture has enabled him to find appropriate solutions for the design problems at hand.









Isidoros and Anthemios
(First half of sixth century)
Anthemios and Isidoros lived in the first half of the sixth century. Anthemios was born in the ancient city of Tralles in Asia Minor (in the area encompassed by modern Turkey) and probably studied in Alexandria, speaking Greek. An experimental scientist and theoretician, he easily assumed mastery over the technical aspects of architecture. Although a splendid artist, Anthemios gained most recognition for his design of the Hagia Sophia on which he worked with Isidoros.
An architect, engineer, and scholar, Isidoros was born in Miletus (in the area encompassed by modern Turkey) and presumably received his education in Constantinople. Although historians often consider him Anthemios's engineer, he probably worked as an architect-engineer with Anthemios assuming the role of senior partner. Although the two probably worked on several projects together, their only certain conglomeration occurred with the Hagia Sophia.
Some authorities avoid calling Anthemios and Isidoros architects in the traditional sense of the word, but their innovative work on the Hagia Sophia marks them as more than engineers. Borrowing from Roman Imperial, late antique, and early Christian concepts, they designed and built the major monument of Byzantine architecture. All the traditional churches of the Byzantine, Slavic, Orthodox worlds, built over the past 1400 years descend in some form or other from their original design.








Apollodorus of Damascus
(Early part of Second Century A. D.)
Apollodorus lived during the early part of the second century. Supposedly born in Damascus, Apollodorus acted as the chief architect for the Roman emperor Trajan. He was a master engineer, a bridge builder and sculptor, as well as the author of technical treatises.
A prominent figure of his time, he worked on several important commission within Rome. Although his name has often been incorrectly attached to buildings that he did not design, he was responsible for many great works of his time. As one of the few known architects to design during the period between the architecture of Vitruvius and Brunelleschi, he has received much attention.
Although Apollodorus lacked the creativity of Severus and Celer, he clearly lived up to Vitruvius's prescription that architects should achieve high levels of skill in all artistic areas. Judging from the remains of his Forum, Basilica, Baths, and Markets, Apollodorus was a gifted and innovative designer. His work embodied the central principles of one of the Roman imperial style.








C. R. Ashbee
(b. London, England 1863; d. Sevenoaks, England 1942)
C.R. Ashbee was born in London in 1863. A leading member of the Arts & Crafts movement, he received an architectural education at King's College. Ashbee apprenticed at Bodley & Garner, a firm that specialized in Gothic Revival architecture. His commitment to the Arts & Crafts movement occurred as a result of his work with this firm.
In 1888 Ashbee founded the Guild and School of Handicraft in the East End of London. At this school students were trained in the Arts & Crafts tradition with particular emphasis on furniture design.
Ashbee's work shows the spareness and restraint typical of the Arts & Crafts movement. In addition to his own designs, he is notable for drawing attention to the work of the Greene brothers and to Frank Lloyd Wright in America. He also wrote an essay Should We Stop Teaching Art? that drew attention to the changing nature of industrial patronage and client organization.
Ashbee died near Sevenoaks, England in 1942.


Erik Gunnar Asplund
(b. Stockholm, Sweden 1885; d. Stockholm, Sweden 1940)
Erick Asplund was born in Stockholm in 1885. Generally considered Sweden's leading architect, Asplund began his career as a painter before he studied architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. After completing his studies, Asplund worked for the architects Tengrom, Westman and Ostberg. He rounded out his architectural education with extensive travels through Sweden and other parts of Europe.
Asplund worked alone and obtained a large amount of his work through competitions. Aside from office practice, Asplund taught at the Royal Institute of Technology and edited a Swedish architectural magazine.
By the end of the 1920's, Asplund had become a committed Modernist. In his architecture, he sought to point the way "to a new architecture and a new life". Keeping with this ideal, he became a signatory to the Acceptera manifesto of 1931. His layout for the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 clearly indicates his modernist ideals.
During the period from 1931 until his death, Asplund moved away from Modernism and began showing a sympathy towards a stripped Nordic classicism. Asplund continued to design until his death in Stockholm in 1940.





Gae Aulenti
(b. Palazzolo dello Stello, Italy 1927)
Gaetana Aulenti was born in Palazzolo dello Stello, Italy in 1927. After, she graduated from the Milan Polytechnic School of Architecture in 1954, she established a private practice in Milan. Aulenti has taught and lectured throughout Europe.
Aulenti views architecture as a concrete, untouchable entity that uses the city as its form generator. She sees architecture in terms of its relationship to the urban environment. In her designs, she blends the private with the public to generate architectural forms and spatial relationships.
Aulenti believes that to create an effective domestic environment, architects must maintain the spatial elements and attributes that exist within a city. Accordingly, she attempts to design buildings in such a way that they share the complexity and density that exists within an urban atmosphere.
Aulenti, like other prominent Italian architects, works on a wide-range of projects that encompass industrial design and interior design, as well as architecture. In her later works, Aulenti has moved from the design of houses and showrooms to larger commissions.





M. H. Baillie-Scott
(b. near Ramsgate, England 1865; d. Brighton, England 1945)
Baillie-Scott was born near Ramsgate in 1865. He initially trained at the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester with the intent of managing his father's estates in Australia, but after graduation he was sidetracked by an interest in architecture.
Baillie-Scott worked as an architect from 1889 to 1939. Although he produced nearly 300 buildings over the course of his career, his early domestic work was of the most architectural value.
A manifestation of the English "Free School", Baillie-Scott's work influenced the Deutsher Werkbund, the Chicago School and Frank Lloyd Wright. His mature work is characterized by the utilization of open planning and rural detailing.
In the later part of his career, Baillie-Scott's reputation declined because he maintained the design position he had generated in the early 1900s without adopting the principles of the Modern Movement.
Baillie-Scott died in Brighton in 1945.




Luis Barragan
(b. Guadalajara, Mexico 1902; d. Mexico City, Mexico 1988)
Louis Barragán was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1902. After he graduated with a degree in engineering in 1924, he travelled extensively throughout Europe. His future design ideas were shaped by the Moorish architecture of Southern Spain, the domestic architecture of the Mediterranean, the gardens of Ferdinand Bac, the theories of Frederick Kiesler, and the writings and theories of Le Corbusier.
Barragan designed his early works in the International Style. However, in 1945 the ideas generated by his travels through Europe and by his own sense of Mexican "regionalism" synthesized into a personal design style. Additionally inspired by native artwork, Barragan sought to create an architecture that retained its vernacular roots while it strove for spiritual beauty and harmony with nature. Barragan has tried to recreate the serenity and beauty of his childhood surroundings through a romantic approach to landscape architecture.
Unlike his contemporaries he adhered to the theories of painter and landscape architect Ferdinand Bac who focused upon the garden as a magical environment. Thick walls, small openings, bright colors, and the use of natural material characterize his mature compositions. These later works also depend on the delightful interplay of sunlight and water for much of their success.
Barragán died in Mexico City in 1988.



Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860)
The architect of the Houses of Parliament (Westminster Palace). He was born in London, studied first for a Lambeth architect and then abroad for a while, mainly in Italy, and his work shows the influence of Italian Renaissance architecture.
His first important work was a church in Brighton (St Peter's), and after further churches in Manchester and Oldham, he had his first significant commissions in London. Following the destruction by fire of the Houses of Parliament in 1834, Barry won the competition for the new buildings, on which he worked from 1837 through the commencement of building in 1840, to the completion of first the House of Lords in 1847, and then the House of Commons in 1852 (though some work carried on after that). The Victoria Tower, perhaps the most satisfyingly perpendicular Gothic part of the structure, was completed after Barry's death by his son. Working together with him on this pre-eminent example of Victorian Gothic was Pugin. (See the page on Westminster Bridge for description of the building as seen from across the river)
Barry's other well known buildings include the Manchester Athenaeum (1836), Manchester City Art Gallery (built 1824-35), the Treasury building in Whitehall (1845), the Travellers' Club (1829-31) and the Reform Club (1837) - both Italianate - and the Royal College of Surgeons. One of his sons, Sir John Wolfe-Barry, was the engineer for Tower Bridge; another, Edward M. Barry, worked with his father on Halifax Town Hall, and was the architect of Charing Cross Hotel.




William Henry Barlow
(b. Charlton, London 1812; d. 1902)
William Henry Barlow was born in Charlton, London in 1812. A civil engineer, he worked in several dockyards before he obtained a job as an engineer with a railway line. After working for six years in Turkey, he returned to England where he worked as assistant engineer to the Manchester and Birmingham Railway.
In 1842 Barlow joined Midland Railway. During his tenure with Midland, he designed and built a rail-line to London. He also designed the main terminal at Saint Pancras. For his much copied terminal, he created an immense, iron-and-glass vault, that remained the widest span for twenty-five years.
Barlow provided advice for cathedral restoration and publishing several writings dealing with structural problems. He was the President of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
An engineer whose name became synonymous with the Railway Age, Barlow died in 1902.




Edward Larrabee Barnes
(b. Chicago, Illinois 1915; d. September 21, 2004)
"Edward Larrabee Barnes, who set up his office in New York in 1949, was a true follower of the Harvard Graduate School of design style which emerged in the 1930s under the inspired leadership of Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Its eminently purist forms of the European Modern Movement influenced many besides Barnes, including his near contemporary, I. M. Pei, and led to an architecture of restraint that was sensitive both to locality and to materials."
— Times of London, November 17, 2004
Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1915, Edward Larrabee Barnes graduated with a Masters in Architecture from Harvard University. After traveling through Europe on the Sheldon Travelling Fellowship he established a private practice in New York. He taught at Pratt Institute in New York and Yale University in Connecticut. He has also served as vice-president to the American Academy in Rome.
Barnes designed a wide range of projects including civic, commercial, educational, and ecclesiastical buildings. He has also designed several urban and campus plans. For the most part, he created monumental buildings which avoid the appearance of coldness or formality. In his work, he exhibits sensitivity to both site and materials.
Barnes used geometry to order his spaces without restricting them. He meticulously detailed his buildings and simplified complex programs with dominant shapes and homogeneous materials. To further simplify and organize his designs, Barnes used modules. Precast concrete panels, cut stone and glass frequent his designs and help impose modular restrictions.
Some of his later works exhibit a lighter approach to materials, but they still rely on formal order and exacting detail.



Geoffrey Bawa
(b. Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), 1919; d. Colombo, Sri Lanka, May 27, 2003)
"Bawa finally qualified as an architect in 1957 at the age of thirty-eight and returned to Ceylon to take over what was left of Reid's practice. He gathered together a group of talented young designers and artists who shared his growing interest in Ceylon's forgotten architectural heritage, and his ambition to develop new ways of making and building. ...
"The practice established itself as the most respected and prolific in Sri Lanka, with a portfolio that included religious, social, cultural, educational, governmental, commercial and residential buildings, creating a canon of prototypes in each of these areas. It also became the springboard for a new generation of young Sri Lankan architects. "



Gunter Behnisch
(b. Dresden, Germany 1922)
Gunter Behnisch was born in Dresden in 1922. He trained at the Technical University in Stuttgart then worked for Rolf Gutbrod for one year before he started his own practice.
In 1967 Behnisch formed Gunter Behnisch and Partner. Initially the firm concentrated its efforts on prefabricated school buildings. Since this system allowed for little flexibility it was dropped in favor of a more organic modern style. Through organic architecture the firm was able to utilize "more varied, flexible forms and more ecologically balanced designs."
Behnisch firmly believes in and designs with the idea that the innovative building techniques and materials provide the catalyst for new architectural possibilities.



Peter Behrens
(b. Hamburg, Germany 1868; d. Berlin, Germany 1940)
Peter Behrens was born in Hamburg in 1868. Originally trained as a painter, Behrens eventually abandoned painting in favor of graphic and applied arts. In 1899 he was invited to the Artists' Colony at Darmstadt where he maintained a leadership position. Afterwards he worked as the Directore of the Kunstgewerkeschule in Dusseldorf. Behren's interim there stimulated a new geometric abstraction in his work.
From 1907 to 1914, Behrens worked as an artistic adviser to the AEG in Berlin. While with AEG he created the world's first corporate image. Most of his architectural designs for the AEG borrowed from industry both in terms of form and material. The Turbine Factory in Berlin-Moabit most successfully displays the industrial nature of most of his buildings.
Behren can be considered a key figure in the transition from Jugendstil to Industrial Classicism. He played a central role in the evolution of German Modernism.
Behrens died in Berlin in 1940.



Belgiojoso, Peressutti and Rogers
(est. 1932)
The partnership of Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti & Rogers was established in Milan, Italy in 1932. It was composed of four graduates of the Milan Polytechnic - Gianluigi Banfi (b. Milan 1910; d. 1945), Lodovico Belgiojoso (b. Milan 1909), Enrico Peressuiti (b. 1908; d. Milan 1975) and Ernesto Nathan Rogers (b. Trieste, 1909; d. 1969).
The partnership rejected the traditional neoclassical teachings of the Polytechnic, and incorporated ideas from such modern European architects as Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe into their designs. Despite this, their designs retained traces of the Italian architectural tradition.
Although World War II temporarily interfered with their work, and led to the death of Banfi, the surviving three members rejoined after the war to produce some of the more pivotal works of that period. These works showed a melding of traditional architecture with a modern philosophy.
Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti & Rogers worked in all areas of architecture including interior design, industrial design, and urban planning. While working professionally, the members of BBPR were also active as writers and teachers. Rogers was especially active, making major contributions to architectural journalism as the editor of Quadranted, Domus, and Casabella-Continuita.
The firm made a major contribution in spreading modern concepts in Italy.



Pietro Belluschi
(b. Ancona, Italy 1899; d. 1994)
Pietro Belluschi was born in Ancona, Italy in 1899. He trained as an engineer at both the University of Rome and at Cornell University, emigrating to the U. S. in 1923. After working as a mining engineer, he joined the Portland based architecture firm of A. E. Doyle. Belluschi acted as chief designer with A. E. Doyle for several years before becoming a partner in 1933. He assumed control of the firm under his own name in 1943.
During his years in Portland, Belluschi designed several commercial buildings in the evolving International Style. Although his commercial designs owed much to the International Style, his domestic and religious work showed a preference for regional traditions and native materials. While contemporary firms rejected tradition, Doyle's office maintained a strong Beaux Arts tradition.
From 1951 to 1965, Belluschi acted as Dean of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his fifty years of practice, both in Portland and in Massachusetts, Belluschi designed over 1000 buildings.



Hendrik Petrus Berlage
(b. Amsterdam, Netherlands 1856; d. The Hague, Netherlands, 1934)
Hendrik Berlage was born in Amsterdam in 1856. He studied architecture under Gottfried Semper at the Zurich Institute of Technology during the 1870s after which he travelled extensively through Europe. In the 1880s he formed a Partnership in Holland with Theodore Sanders which produced a mixture of practical and utopian projects. A published author, Berlage held memberships in various architectural societies including CIAM.
A visit Berlage made to the U.S. in 1911 greatly affected his architecture. He was particularly influenced by the organic, wood-based work of Henry Hobson Richardson, Louis H. Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Considered the "Father of Modern architecture" in the Netherlands and the intermediary between the Traditionalists and the Modernists, Berlage's theories inspired most Dutch Modernist groups including De Stijl, the Amsterdam School and the New Objectivists. He received the British Royal Gold Medal in 1932.
Berlage died at The Hague in 1934.


Bernini
(b. Naples, Italy 1598; d. Rome, Italy 1680)
Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini was born in Naples in 1598, the son of a Florentine sculptor by whom he was trained. After settling in Rome, Bernini came to the attention of the future Pope Urban VIII. Under the patronage of Pope Urban VIII, Bernini spent his entire career in Rome where he gained his architectural fame under Alexander VII (1655-67).
Considered the creator of the Baroque style, Bernini created a fusion of architecture, painting, and sculpture that led to the generation of new, dynamic forms. His works used the drama of false perspective and trompe-l'oeil to create an impact that involved the spectator. He also created a much copied palace facade type which he articulated with massive pilasters above a rusticated base.
Although Bernini grafted completely new sculptural forms onto Renaissance buildings, he maintained a continuity with the original serenity of the Renaissance ideal.
Bernini died in Rome in 1680.


Dominikus Bohm
(b. Jettingen, Germany 1880; d. Cologne, Germany 1955)
Dominkus Böhm was born in Jettingen, Germany in 1880. He studied at the Technische Hochschul in Stuttgart under Theodor Fischer before establishing a private practice in Cologne in 1903. He taught at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Offenbach and served in the army during the First World War.
After the devastation of World War I, Böhm became a leading figure in the revival of twentieth century German Catholic church architecture. Böhm's own spirituality affected the design concepts of all of his work and reflected changes occurring within the Roman Catholic Church immediately after the war.
Böhm pioneered the concept of the single-volume, open-plan church. His works tended toward expressionism but maintained a strong sense of geometry and materials.
Dominkus Böhm was the father of Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Gottfried Böhm, born in 1920.
Dominkus Böhm died in Cologne in 1955.



Gottfried Bohm
(b. Offenbach-am-Main 1920)
Gottfried Böhm was born in Offenbach-am-Main in 1920. The son of Dominkus Böhm, he graduated from the Munich Technisch Hochschule in 1946 after which he studied sculpture at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. He worked in his father's office until 1955, when his father died and he took over the firm.
During his career Böhm designed a large number of buildings including churches, museums, theaters, cultural centers, civic centers, offices and housing. In his designs, Böhm blended old and new styles to create successful internal spaces. He integrated building parts and spaces with both his overall design concept and with his choice of materials.
Böhm won the Grande Medaille d'Or de l'Academie d'Architecture, the Fritz Schumacher Prize for Architecture in Hamburg and the Pritzker Architecture Prize.



Francesco Borromini
(b. Bissone, Lugano 1599; d. Rome, Italy 1667)
Francesco Borromini was born in Bissone, Lugano in 1599. He learned stone cutting from his father, Giovanni Domenico Castelli. While still a child, he moved to Milan to continue studying stone cutting. In 1619 he moved to Rome where he worked as a craftsman on St. Peters. At this time, he changed his name from Castelli to Borromini.
Initially Borromini worked as a stone mason under Carlo Maderno, the official architect to St. Peter's. By 1620 he was drafting and designing. When Maderno died in 1629, Borromini joined the workshop of Bernini. Under Bernini he gained more experience as a draftsman and designer. In 1634 he began work as an independent architect with his reconstruction of the monastery and church of St. Carlo Borromeo.
Borromini's architecture "springs from the contrast between convention and freedom." Borromini used tradition as a basis for design but did not view it as an ultimate, unalterable law.
Borromini died in Rome in 1667.



Mario Botta
(b. Mendrisio, Switzerland 1943)
Born in Mendrisio, Switzerland in 1943, Botta trained as a technical draftsman before he studied at the Liceo Artistico in Milan. From 1965 to 1969 he studied at the Istituto Universitario di Architecttura in Venice. During this same period he worked as an assistant to Le Corbusier and, then, to Louis I. Kahn. He opened his own practice in Lugano, Switzerland in 1970.
Essentially Modernist in approach, Mario Botta has been strongly influenced by both Carlo Scarpa and Louis Kahn. Although his later works increasingly accept existing forms and styles as the starting point of design, Botta still adheres to a philosophy of historical determinism in which architecture acts as a mirror of its times.
Botta's works characteristically show respect for topographical conditions and regional sensibilities and his designs generally emphasize craftsmanship and geometric order. Because he attempts to reconcile traditional architectural symbolism with the aesthetic rules of the Modern Movement, Botta is often identified with the Italian neo-rationalist group, the Tendenaz.
Botta built exclusively in Switzerland during his early career, gaining international acclaim for such buildings as the Capuchin convent in Lugano, the Craft Centre in Balerna and the Administration Building for the Staatsbank in Fribourg. Since the second half of the 1970s, his houses have become more classical in plan and elevation, and in the 1980's he has secured international commissions such as the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, California.


Etienne-Louis Boullee
(b. Paris, France 1728; d. Paris 1799)
Etienne Louis Boullee was born in Paris in 1728. He spent his entire life in Paris working first as a painter and later as an architectural theorist. He taught at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees and later became a professor at the Academi d' Architecture. Although few of his architectural designs were built, his theories and drawings enjoyed a large public following.
Boullee admired the clear, bold lines of neoclassic architecture but considered emotion equally as important to architecture as classical rules of proportioning. In his writing, Essai sur l' Art , which remained unpublished until 1953, he pleaded for a monumental architecture which employed both emotion and reason. In his designs Boullee restricted himself to the use of simple, geometrical shapes, such as pyramids, sphere and cylinders.
Boullee died in Paris in 1799.


Donato Bramante
(b. near Urbino, Italy 1444; d. Rome, Italy 1514)
Donato Bramante was born in Monte Asdruald (now Fermignano) near Urbino in 1444. Little is known of his early training, but from a very young age he studied painting under Mantegna and Piero della Francesca. In 1499 Bramante moved to Rome, where he came to the attention of the future Pope Julius II. In November 1503 Julius engaged Bramante for the renewal of the Vatican complex.
In his work, Bramante changed conventional architectural space by inserting illusionistic features more typical of painting and stage settings. In his Roman projects, particularly those for St. Peter's, he achieved the "grand manner" which indirectly led to Mannerism. Historically, his importance is due to the way he inspired and influenced successive architects rather than through his original buildings, few of which survive unaltered.
Bramante died in Rome in 1514, a year after his patron Pope Julius II.





Marcel Breuer
( b. Pecs, Hungary 1902; d. New York, N.Y. 1981)
Marcel Breuer was born in Pecs, Hungary in 1902. He studied at Allami Foreaiskola, at Pecs, and at the Bauhaus in Weimar where he graduated in 1924. He taught at the Bauhaus in Dessau until 1928 and practiced in Berlin for three years afterwards. After working for one year in London with F. R. S. Yorke, he emigrated to the United States where he worked as an associate professor at Harvard and maintained a working arrangement with Walter Gropius. He operated a New York practice from 1946 until his retirement in 1976.
Breuer's early projects in the United States were largely domestic, but in 1952 he worked with Nervi and Zehrfuss as architect for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. This prestigious work carried his practice into the international field.
Breuer's buildings were always distinguished by an attention to detail and a clarity of expression. Considered one of the last true functionalist architects, Breuer helped shift the bias of the Bauhaus from "Arts & Crafts" to "Arts & Technology". Many pieces of modern, tubular steel furniture in use today, including the Cesca and Wassily chairs by Breuer himself and still in production, can trace their origins back to the Breuer experiments of the mid-20's.
Breuer died in New York in 1981.




Johannes Brinkman
(b. Rotterdam, Netherlands 1902; d. Rotterdam, 1949)
Johannes Brinkman was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 1902. He studied at the Technische Hochscule in Delft after which he worked in the office of his father Michiel Brinkman. From 1925 to 1936 he worked in partnership with L. C. van der Vlugt, together creating the remarkable Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam, and from 1937 until his retirment in 1948 he worked with Johannes Van Broek.
Brinkman based many of his designs on functionalist theories similar to those developed by De Stijl. His firm designed modern buildings that utilized industrial detailing and that often depended on a contrasting system of solids and voids. The firm also frequently incorporated a curtain-wall system.
Because he favored functionalism in architecture, Brinkmann adamantly opposed the traditions of craftsmanship then being encouraged at the Technical College of Delft. His designs stressed industrialized, non-craft techniques. As a result his work was not widely accepted in the Netherlands during the late 1930s and 40s.
Brinkmann died in Rotterdam in 1949.



Isambard Kingdom Brunel
(b. Portsmouth, England in 1806; d. 1859)
The son of an engineer (Marc Isambard Brunel), Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born in Portsmouth, England in 1806. He studied in France where he developed an appreciation for the architecture of the Grand Siecle. He entered his father's office in 1822 and apprenticed with his father on the early stages of the construction for the Thames Tunnel. Although he quickly advanced to the position of engineer in charge, his apprenticeship ended when the river broke through the tunneling shield.
While recovering from the tunnel accident, Brunel entered a competition for the bridge over the Avon Gorge at Clifton. Although he won this commission in 1831, construction was not completed until after his death. In 1833, Brunel was appointed chief engineer of the new Great Western Railway. In this position, Brunel came to pioneer several strength tests and preservation methods.
Brunel generated imaginative and confident designs for everything from tunnels, railways and bridges to harbors, prefabricated buildings and ships. He confidently readopted contemporary concepts of efficiency and beauty in order to meet the challenge of the new technology. He was particularly instrumental in expanding use of iron.
Throughout his career Brunel made an effort to seek out new technologies and anticipate developing markets. He used fundamental logic and analysis to reshape the mechanical and structural engineering of his time. In doing so, he helped reshape the art and technology of architecture.
Brunel died in 1859.


Filippo Brunelleschi
(b. Florence, Italy 1377; d. Florence, Italy 1446)
Filippo Brunelleschi was born in Florence in 1377. He began his training in Florence as an apprentice goldsmith, gaining status as a master in 1404. He was active as a sculptor for most of his life.
Brunelleschi began his architectural career in 1404 when he acted as an advisor for the Santa Maria Novella, but his involvement with the cupola for the Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence marked his first foray as a practicing architect. He worked on this project off and on from 1417 until 1434. All of Brunelleschi's works indicate that he possessed inventiveness as both an engineer and as an architect.
Brunelleschi was the first architect to employ mathematical perspective to redefine Gothic and Romanesque space and to establish new rules of proportioning and symmetry. Although Brunelleschi was considered the main initiator of stylistic changes in Renaissance architecture, critics no longer consider him the "Father of the Renaissance".
Brunelleschi died in Florence in 1446.




Erik Bryggman
(b. Turku, Finland 1891; d. Turku 1955)
Erik William Bryggman was born in Turku, Finland in 1891. He studied at the Turku School of Art and at the Obo Svenska Klassiska Lyceum in Turku. He graduated from the Institute of Technology in Helsinki, after which he worked in the office of architect Valter Jung in Helsinki. From 1923 until his death he worked in private practice.
A year after Bryggman graduated from the Institute of Technology in 1916 Finland achieved independence from Russian rule. With this independence, Finland regained access to the architectural styles of Europe. Italian architecture and an early involvement with historical preservation particularly influenced Bryggmann in terms of both his classical styling and his sensitive approach to building and site.
Although Bryggmann was instrumental in introducing the Functionalist movement to Finland, his architecture shifted to a more romantic style in the late 1930s. From this time he moved in a more decorative direction.
Bryggman's commissions included summer villas, schools, hospitals, and power plants. Toward the end of his career, he designed practical unassuming projects with features typical of contemporary Swedish Architecture.
Bryggman died in Turku, Finland in 1955.



Charles Bulfinch
(b. Boston, Massachusetts 1763; d. Boston 1844)
Charles Bulfinch was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1763. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in mathematics and perspective, he travelled through Europe studying architecture. Upon his return to Boston, he established a professional architecture practice in which he attempted to translate English town-planning and European architecture into an American setting.
The city of Boston appointed Bulfinch as permanent Chairman of the Board of Selectmen and as Police Superintendent. Under his direction, both the infrastructure and civic center of Boston were transformed into a dignified classical style that became increasingly detached from its European sources.
In 1818 Bulfinch succeeded Latrobe as the architect for the U.S. capitol, which had been burned by the British in 1814. In this capacity, he continued to develop an American neoclassical style of physical simplicity and refinement. With academic precision, he redirected both the form and the materials of neoclassic architecture to achieve a comprehensive blending of aesthetic and structural needs.
Bulfinch died in Boston in 1844.

Lord Burlington
(b. Yorkshire, England 1694; d. Londesborough, England 1753)
Richard Boyle, Third Earl of Burlington and Fourth Earl of Cork, was born in Yorkshire in 1694. In 1714 he began his Grand Tour of Italy. This tour, in conjunction with his study of Palladio's Four Books, influenced Burlington's decision to revive what he considered the true architecture of Vitruvius as interpreted by Andrea Palladio.
By the early 1720s Burlington had become a practicing architect, employed mostly by fellow members of the aristocracy. His influence on architecture stems mostly from his political connections. As Lord Treasurer of Ireland, Lord Lieutenant of the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire, a Privy Councillor and a Director of the Royal Academy of Music, he managed to push his architectural views into the forefront. Through his efforts, Palladionism became the leading style in England.
Although he lacked the critical analysis to create a new architecture, and his strict reproductions lacked imagination, Burlington greatly influenced the development of English Neoclassicism. Most of his work has been demolished or redesigned.


Daniel Burnham
(Daniel Hudson Burnham b. Henderson, New York 1846; d. Heidelburg, Germany 1912)
Daniel Burnham was the leading principal of the Chicago architecture firm Daniel Burnham and Co., influential in the origin of the modern skyscraper.
See also Burnham and Root.
Burnham and Root
(John Wellborn Root b. Lumpkin, Georgia 1850; d. 1891; Daniel Hudson Burnham b. Henderson, New York 1846; d. Heidelburge, Germany 1912)
John Wellborn Root was born in Lumpkin, Georgia, and raised in Atlanta. When Union troops occupied Atlanta in 1864, Root went to Liverpool, England to study at the Clare Mount School. In 1866, he returned to the United States and in 1869 he graduated in civil engineering from New York University. For the next several years, he worked in a series of offices in both New York and Chicago.
Daniel Burnham was born in Henderson, New York in 1846. He studied at the New Church School in Waltham, Massachusetts and received private tutoring. He worked for William Le Baron Jenney in his Chicago office for a short time. After several failed attempts in other businesses, he eventually joined the firm of Carter, Drake and Wright.
Burnham and Root first met in 1872 in the Chicago offices of Carter, Drake, and Wright where both worked as draftsmen. In 1873 the two established a partnership that successfully utilized the idealism of Root and the pragmatism of Burnham.
During their eighteen years together, Burnham and Root designed and built private houses, office buildings, apartment buildings, railroad stations, warehouses, schools, hospitals, and churches. Burnham developed and managed the office organization while Root headed the design department.
Although the firm had a steady supply of residential commissions, their most memorable works are a series of 'big buildings for big business'. Their best known buildings have been celebrated for the inclusion of pioneering structural components, the detailed treatment of surface, and the handling of interior and exterior volumes.
After Root's death in 1891, Burnham concentrated on town and area planning. Burnham died in Heidelburg in 1912.



Decimus Burton and Richard Turner
Decimus Burton (b. 30 September 1800; d. December 1881)
"Decimus Burton was a prolific English architect and garden designer, particularly associated with projects in the classical style in London parks, including buildings at Kew Gardens and London Zoo , and with the layout and architecture of the seaside towns of Fleetwood and St Leonards on Sea and of Tunbridge Wells . (His first name, Latin for 'tenth', denoted his position as the tenth child in his family.)
"Burton initially trained in the architectural and building practice run by his father James Burton (1761-1837), and then with John Nash for whom he elaborated on the designs of Cornwall Terrace, facing London 's Regent's Park. ...
"He had a 30-year association with Kew Gardens, starting initially with the layout of gardens and paths before moving on to major buildings. With iron founder Richard Turner , he designed the glass and iron Palm House at Kew (1844-1848); at the time, this greenhouse was the largest in the world at 363ft long, 100ft wide and 66ft high. He then designed the even larger Temperate House, but did not live to see the project completed (although a section opened in 1863, lack of funds meant it was not finally completed until 1898). Other projects at Kew included the Victoria Gate (1848) and the Water Lily House (1852)."
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimus_Burton
Richard Turner (b. 1798, d. 1881)
"Richard Turner was an Irish iron-founder and manufacturer of glasshouses, born in Dublin. His works included the Palm House at Kew Gardens (with Decimus Burton ), the glasshouse in the Winter Gardens at Regent's Park in London, and the Curvilinear Range at the Irish National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Ireland. He was a pioneer in the structural use of wrought iron."
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Turner




William Butterfield
(b. London, England 1814; d. London, England 1900)
The son of a chemist William Butterfield was born in London in 1814. He trained as a builder then studied architecture under E. L. Blackburn. In 1842, after he established his own practice, he aligned himself with the Ecclesiological movement. This alliance with such a radical religious group influenced the architectural direction of his career.
Butterfield expounded the Ecclesiological doctrine that churches must be planned and designed as metaphors for the 'spiritual functions of sacrament and worship'. As a Gothic Revival architect, he reinterpreted the Gothic language into contemporary terms that would meet the functional and spiritual needs of his buildings which were mainly religious in nature.
Butterfield received the RIBA Gold Medal in 1884. He died in London in 1900.





Santiago Calatrava
(b. Valencia, Spain 1951)
Santiago Calatrava was born in Valencia, Spain in 1951. He graduated from the Institute of Architecture in Valencia and from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Calatrava opened his own architecture and engineering office in Zurich. Most of his early realized work was in Switzerland and Spain, where he has exhibited his designs and won several awards.
As both an architect and an engineer, Calatrava easily identifies with both disciplines. He often creates innovative works that depend on a firm grasp of both the creative and structural aspects of design. His skills as an engineer allow him to create sculptural surfaces and unusual spaces.
Calatrava avoids the apathetic acceptance of established forms. In 1979 he won the Auguste Perret award for rekindling the quality of Perret's structural work and for re-emphasizing the importance of primary structure in defining form.
Despite an influential presence within the European architectural community, Calatrava has rarely designed a totally enclosed building. Rather, most of his creations are open structures.





Ictinus and Callicrates with Phidias
(5th century B. C.)
(Ictinus is also spelled Iktinos. Callicrates is also spelled Kallikrates.)
The ancient Greek contemporaries Ictinus, Callicrates, and Phidias, are jointly credited in the creation of the Parthenon, in Athens, during the rule of Pericles, circa -440.
Although nothing is known about his life or artistic personality, Iktinos, along with Kallikrates, acted as the architect of the Parthenon, according to Plutarch. He worked on several other temples throughout Greece, including the Telesterion at Eleusis and the Temple of Apollo at Bassai. Kallikrates acted much as Iktinos's contractor, his technical director of works.
Kallikrates worked mainly in Athens during the great building program inspired by Perikles. There has been some suggestion that Kallikrates might have been the official city architect of Athens, and that he was more concerned with the technical and managerial aspects of architecture than with formal design. Thus, he would have assisted Iktinos with the construction of the Parthenon, and with the supervision of building work, but would not have been responsible for aesthetic features.
The most famous artist of his time, Pheidias acted as supervisor of all architectural and artistic works for the Acropolis in Athens. All of the exterior sculpture was produced under his direction, and the enormous statue of Athena which resided within the temple was his work alone. Although much of the building and its decoration have survived, none of Pheidias's personal contributions remain.






Cambridge Seven Associates
(Established Cambridge, Massachusetts 1962)
The Cambridge Seven partnership was established in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1962 by seven relatively inexperienced young designers. Six of the original founders remained with the firm for many years: Louis Bakanowski, Ivan Chermayeff, Peter Chermayeff, Paul Dietrich, Thomas Geismar and Terry Rankine. Charles Redmon replaced one of the founding partners in 1971.
The Cambridge Seven partnership was formed with the idea of recreating an all purpose office that could easily work in every area of design. As a result, the firm has been involved with film making, graphic design, exhibition design, and interior design. Although the firm has particularly excelled in exhibition design, it also placed emphasis on architectural commissions.
The firm has worked on a wide range of projects including civic centers, academic institutions, museums, housing, and theaters. The firm has also been highly involved with restoration and rehabilitation work.
Perhaps due to its size, the work of the partnership in the 1970s and 1980s varied widely in both size and quality. While many of the projects rank among the best buildings of their time, others seem mundane and banal. Although the group made no effort to create its own design style, it did generate the possibility of architecture as an all-encompassing profession.
The firm is now known as Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc., and the original partners are no longer with the firm.






Felix Candela
(b. Madrid, Spain 1910; d. 1997)
Felix Candela was born in Madrid in 1910. He entered Madrid's Escuela Superior de Arquitrectura in 1927 and graduated in 1935. Sidetracked by his political struggle against Franco, he did not practice architecture until he emigrated to Mexico in 1939.
Candella believed that strength should come from form not mass. This belief led to an extensive exploration of tensile shell structures. His nickname became "The Shell Builder" because of this structural favoritism.
Frequently forced to act as architect, structural engineer and contractor in order to further his work, Candella sees architects as engineers who possess the ability to design both great cathedrals and low cost housing.




Douglas Cardinal
(b. Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, 7 March 1934)
"Douglas Cardinal's aim has been to give architectural expression to a synthesis of the indigenous cultures of the Indians of North America with that of the dominating Euro-American culturre. Although his ancestry is largely Indian, he has had to take deliberate steps in his adulthood to learn and absorb Indian lore and philosophy, an effort that, coming after his study of architecture, inexorably influenced his philosophy of architecture as profoundly as it influenced his philosophy of life."
— Abraham Rogatnick, in Muriel Emmanuel, Contemporary Architects, p139-140.





Giancarlo de Carlo
(b. Genoa, Italy 1919)
Giancarlo de Carlo was born in Genoa, Italy in 1919. He trained in Italy as an architect from 1942 to 1949, a time of political turmoil which generated his philosophy toward life and architecture. Libertarian socialism is the underlying force for all of his planning and design.
De Carlo sees architecture as a consensus activity. He generates his designs from the inherent conflict that occurs in the site and historical context of architecture. His ideas link CIAM ideals with late twentieth century reality.
Although his political beliefs have limited his portfolio of buildings, his ideas have remained untainted by 'Post-Modernist' beliefs through his journal Spazio e Societa and through his class on the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design (ILAUD), as well as through the support of his Team 10 colleagues.




Carrere and Hastings
(est. New York, New York 1886)
John Mervin Carrere was born to a prosperous family in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1858. He studied at the Institute Breitenstein in Grenchen, Switzerland. He also studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where he met Hastings. When he graduated in 1882 he obtained a job with the New York firm of Mckim, Mead, and White
Hastings was born in New York, New York in 1860. The son of a prominent Presbyterian minister, he initially studied at Columbia University before he attended the Beaux Arts in Paris. After he graduated in 1884, Hastings returned to New York and began working for McKim, Mead and White.
In 1886 Carrere and Hastings left McKim, Mead and White to form their own partnership. In the early phase of their careers, Carrere and Hastings designed nearly all of their buildings with elaborate detailing and overscaled ornamentation. Gradually, the firm refined the work and restrained the tone. They began to borrow from late French Baroque and American Georgian sources. These later buildings show restrained classicism far different from their early ornamentation.
Carrere died in an automobile accident in 1911, just two months before the dedication of the firm's celebrated New York Public Library. This library, which the partners won in a 1897 competition, marked the apex of the firm's career. After Carrere's death, Hastings continued to run the office, maintaining the original firm name. He maintained the simple and elegant classicism of the firm's later work.
In later years Hastings associated himself with other architects in the design of large office buildings. He died in New York, New York in 1929.



Richard Castle
(b. Hesse, Germany 1695; d. 1751)
Richard Castle was born in 1695 in Kassel, Hesse, Germany. Arriving in Dublin in 1728 from London, where he probably established contact with Lord Burlington's circle, he became the assistant and protege of Edward Lovett Pearce, a leading Irish Palladian. When Pearce died in 1733 Castle assumed his commissions, including a series of lavishly detailed country houses.
In Dublin, Castle designed public buildings and several important aristocratic palazzi. He used a particularly robust and masculine Palladian style that was quite distinctive. He was particularly influenced by Pearce and by James Gibbs.
Castle died in 1751.




Severus and Celer
(First Century A. D.)
Severus and Celer lived during the first century. Nero chose them as his architect-engineers for the Domus Aurea. Their work on the Domus Aurea, a palace-villa set down in the heart of Rome, shows that they rejected traditional Roman architecture in favor of a radically new architecture which utilized arches and which focussed on interior spaces.
Severus and Celer shaped space by going beyond the limits of previous experiments to create entirely new kinds of architectural volumes and effects. Since this experimentation occurred within the emperor's palace their architecture attained great prestige.
Championed by a ruler defiant of tradition, the architecture of Severus and Celer flourished. No earlier building approached the technical and artistic solutions found in the Domus Aurea. They exhibited a genuine originality that moved them beyond earlier precedents and which allowed them to create a masterful statement about the possibilities of vaulted space.




William Chambers
(b. Gothenburg, Sweden, 1723; d. London, 1796)
Born the son of a Scottish merchant in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1723, William Chambers studied in England. He returned to Sweden at the age of sixteen to join the Swedish East India Company. His subsequent travels through Bengal and China gave him an Oriental perspective on art and design. By 1749 he had saved enough money from his travels to make architecture his only profession.
Chambers studied in Paris and Italy, absorbing ideas current at the French Academy in Rome. Upon his return to England, Chambers became the architectural tutor to the Prince of Wales. This led to a long and fruitful patronage by the royal family. In 1761 Chambers was appointed as one of the Joint Architects of the King's Work and by 1769 he was so indispensable that he was appointed Comptroller of the King's Works. When the office was reorganized in 1782 he became the Surveyor General and the Comptroller.
William Chambers was a confidant of George III and the first Treasurer of the Royal Academy of the Arts, which became public in 1768. He wrote a Treatise on Civil Architecture, and was a patron of John Soane while Soane was a student at the Academy.
Chamber's architecture blended the symmetrical, well-ordered facades of Palladianism with early forms of Neoclassicism. He died in London in 1796.




G. P. Chedanne
(b. Maromme, France 1861; d. 1940)
Born in Maromme, France, in 1861 Georges-Paul Chedanne studied with Juleien Guadet at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he won many distinctions and prizes, including the Grand Prix for his restoration drawings of the Roman Pantheon. As a result of his studies of the Pantheon in Rome, he was able to provide convincing evidence dating the Pantheon to the reign of Hadrian. This led to the discovery of the remains of Agrippa's Pantheon.
After his sojourn in Rome, Chedanne returned to Paris to practice independently. Although his designs were influenced by the Art Nouveau movement, his style remained highly eclectic and individualistic. His designs ranged from bare and undulating surfaces to severe glass and iron structures to massive masonry forms. In addition to the inspiration of ancient Rome, Chedanne drew upon the traditional motifs and materials of Parisian architecture.


Serge Chermayeff
(b. North Caucus, Russia 1900; d. 1996)
Serge Chermayeff was born in Grozny, North Caucasus, Russia in 1900. At the age of 12 he went to London to study. When the Russian Revolution put an end to his financial support, he entered the army.
Chermayeff worked as an interior designer for Waring & Gillow until he established his own architectural practice in 1930. After 1934 he executed a number of commissions with Eric Mendelsohn. His early works show the influence of both Western-European tradition and Russian Constructivist architecture.
Chermayeff emigrated to the U.S. in 1940 where he opened a practice and entered the teaching profession, first as Art Department Chairman for Brooklyn College and later as President of the New Bauhaus in Chicago. In 1953 he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and opened an office with Hayward Cutting and began teaching as a professor at Harvard. In 1962 he transferred to Yale.



Henry Ciriani
Henry E. Ciriani is a contemporary French architect who works in a modern style.


Henry N. Cobb
(b. 1926) Contemporary U.S. architect, partner of I. M. Pei.


Contamin and Dutert
(Dutert b. Douai, France 1845; d. 1906)
Charles Louis Ferdinand Dutert was born in Douai, France in 1845. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, winning the Grand Prix in 1869. He eventually became a teacher at the same institution.
Like many of his contemporaries, Dutert gained fame as an architect as the result of one spectacular design. In collaboration with the engineer Victor Contamin, he designed the Galerie des Machines at the Paris International Exhibition. The culmination of a series of metal-and-glass designs, the Galerie gained acclaim for both its phenomenal scale and its three-hinged arch structure.
Although Dutert designed other buildings, none matched the Galerie in scale or innovation. Critics have included this building as a key monument in the history of modern architecture because its vast scale was realizable only through new technological methods.
Dutert died in 1906.




Le Corbusier
(b. La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland 1887; d. Cap Martin, France 1965)
Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris was born in La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland, 1887. Trained as an artist, he travelled extensively through Germany and the East. In Paris he studied under Auguste Perret and absorbed the cultural and artistic life of the city. During this period he developed a keen interest in the synthesis of the various arts. Jeanneret-Gris adopted the name Le Corbusier in the early 1920s.
Le Corbusier's early work was related to nature, but as his ideas matured, he developed the Maison-Domino, a basic building prototype for mass production with free-standing pillars and rigid floors. In 1917 he settled in Paris where he issued his book Vers une architecture [Towards a New Architecture], based on his earlier articles in L'Esprit Nouveau.
From 1922 Le Corbusier worked with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. During this time, Le Corbusier's ideas began to take physical form, mainly as houses which he created as "a machine for living in" and which incorporated his trademark five points of architecture.
During World War II, Le Corbusier produced little beyond some theories on his utopian ideals and on his modular building scale. In 1947, he started his Unite d'habitation. Although relieved with sculptural roof-lines and highly colored walls, these massive post-war dwelling blocks received justifiable criticism.
Le Corbusier's post-war buildings rejected his earlier industrial forms and utilized vernacular materials, brute concrete and articulated structure. Near the end of his career he worked on several projects in India, which utilized brutal materials and sculptural forms. In these buildings he readopted the recessed structural column, the expressive staircase, and the flat undecorated plane of his celebrated five points of architecture.
Le Corbusier did not fare well in international competition, but he produced town-planning schemes for many parts of the world, often as an adjunct to a lecture tour. In these schemes the vehicular and pedestrian zones and the functional zones of the settlements were always emphasized.



Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer
(Costa—b. Toulon, France, 1902; d. 1998) (Niemeyer—b. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1907)
Lucio Costa was born in Toulon, France in 1902. He graduated with a diploma in architecture from the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro, in 1924.
Costa initially fostered the growing Neocolonial Revival which spread through Brazil in the 1930s but eventually came to support the revolutionary concepts of the European avant-garde. Appointed as director of the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, he immediately dismantled the existing Beaux-Arts curriculum in favor of Modern ideals. His support of the modern movement was not generally approved and he was quickly replaced as director.
Much of his architecture, notably his competition winning city plan for the new capital Brasilia, owed a debt to the design theories and vocabulary introduced by Le Corbusier. He is often hailed as the man who first introduced the Modern Movement to Brazil.
Oscar Niemeyer was born in Rio de Janeiro Brazil in 1907. He graduated from the Escola Nacional de Belas Artas in Rio de Janeiro in 1934, at which time he joined a team of Brazilian architects collaborating with Le Corbusier on a new Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro. This proved a formative experience.
In 1942, Niemeyer created a series of recreational buildings which embodied a highly expressive style which borrowed extensively from the Brazilian Baroque style of architecture. In 1956 Niemeyer was appointed architectural adviser to Nova Cap - an organization charged with implementing Luis Costa's plans for Brazil's new capital. The following year, he became its chief architect, designing most of the city's important buildings. The epoch of Niemeyer's career, these buildings mark a period of creativity and modern symbolism.
Niemeyer continued to work on Brazilia until 1964 when his political affiliation with the communist party forced him into exile in France. In the late 1960s he resumed his career in Brazil, teaching at the University of Rio de Janeiro and working in private practice. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architecture in 1970.


Charles Correa
(b. Hyderabad, India 1930)
Charles Correa was born in Hyderabad, India in 1930. He studied at the University of Michigan and Massachusetts Institute of Technology after which he established a private practice in Bombay in 1958.
Correa's work in India shows a careful development, understanding and adaptation of Modernism to a non-western culture. Correa's early works attempt to explore a local vernacular within a modern environment. Correa's land-use planning and community projects continually try to go beyond typical solutions to third world problems.
During the 1970s and 1980s Correa has worked on larger projects for which he used a fuller semiotic approach. An international lecturer and traveler, he was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1984, the Aalto Medal, and the UIA Gold Medal in 1990.



Domenico da Cortona
(b. Italy, circa 1465; d. circa 1549)
Domenico da Cortona, known also as Boccador, was brought to France by King Charles VIII. He supervised engineering works at the chateaux of Tournai, Ardres, and Chambord, and is sometimes credited with the design of the Chateau de Chambord. Other evidence suggests that Chambord was designed by the French architect Pierre Nepveu, from Amboise, France.


Keith Cottier
(b. Sydney, Australia 1938)
Keith Eric Cottier was born in Sydney, Australia in 1938. In 1960 he graduated from Sydney Technical College after which he travelled to Europe. Cottier worked with Ian Fraser and Associates in London until 1964 when he returned to Sydney. He joined John Allen and Russell C. Jack and in 1965 became a partner with Allen, Jack and Cottier.
Cottier creates designs characteristic of the 'Sydney School'. Although he uses brick and timber construction to accommodate the abilities of typical Australian construction worker, he creates innovative forms with these traditional materials. He concentrates on relating each building to its environment and creating a building that meets spatial and programmatic needs. He also considers the effects the internal spaces will have on the building's external form.
Cottier regards user needs as the most important influence on his designs. He isolates all possibilities and constraints within the program and site and makes all of his decisions about planning, massing and detailing based on this analysis. He feels with thoughtful analysis each building will fall within a prescribed pattern.


Paulo Mendes da Rocha
(b. Vitoria, Espírito Santo, Brazil, October 25, 1928)
"Paulo Mendes da Rocha of Sao Paulo, Brazil, inspired by the principles and language of modernism, as well as through his bold use of simple materials, has over the past six decades produced buildings with a deep understanding of the poetics of space. He modifies the landscape and space with his architecture, striving to meet both social and aesthetic human needs.
"Whether individual homes or apartments, to a church, sports stadium, art museum, kindergarten, furniture showroom or public plaza, Mendes da Rocha has devoted his career to the creation of architecture guided by a sense of responsibility to the inhabitants of his projects as well as to a broader society."
— from the statement of the 2006 Pritzker Prize jury.
"It is not impossible to create generous architecture even in situations with minimum resources and numerous constraints. What one needs is a largeness of vision and a desire to create something that people can touch, feel, and in which they can participate. This is the message that Paulo Mendes da Rocha gives through his daring, raw, and impressive work to all those throughout the world who seek to maintain their identities and yet have a global consciousness."
— Balkrishna Doshi, Pritzker Juror, 2006.
"I worked on several jobs in the city of São Paulo and gradually made many friends there. Cecilia Scharlach, Maria Amelia melo, Helio Penteaedo, Helio Pasta, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Ubirajara Giglioli, Ruy Ohtake, Eduardo Corona, Ciro Pirondi, and Fernando Lemos are, among many others, the people I like and greatly admire in São Paulo."
— Oscar Niemeyer. The Curves of Time: the memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer.


Justus Dahinden
(b. Zurich, Switzerland 1925)
Justus Dahinden was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1925. Dahinden decided very early in life to be an architect. His studies of Frank Lloyd Wright and Antonio Gaudi stimulated his imagination and enabled him to achieve an ideal balance between radical design and sound method. He graduated from the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich with a degree in Architecture in 1949 and received a degree in Science Technology from the same school in 1956.
Dahinden's architectural career was strongly affected by his religious convictions. Indeed, his analyses of religious complexes became the basis of his first theories on urban complexes. Dahinden was also influenced by the avant-garde projects of the Archigram group and by the theories of the Metabolist Group in Japan.
In Dahinden's work on "urbanotopia" he sought an alternative to the dehumanization of the megalopolis. His designs all deal with the articulation of surroundings around a central focal point. His works demonstrate that normally "immobile structures" can be rendered in dynamic, flexible forms that closely relate to and participate in their existing social and urban texture.


Paeonis and Daphnis
Architects in ancient Greece.


Howard Davis
Howard Davis is a contemporary U.S. architect, currently active in the Pacific Northwest and in India. He received a Master's degree in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with Christopher Alexander.
He has been a professor of architecture at the University of Oregon since the 1980's, and his research into housing and vernacular building types provides a theoretical basis for his ongoing professional practice.
A native of New York City, Davis was educated in physics at The Cooper Union and at Northwestern University, and in architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked professionally in the United States, England, India, Mexico and Israel; has taught at Edinburgh University, the University of California, Berkeley, The University of Texas at Austin and the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. He is a co-author of The Production of Houses along with Christopher Alexander and others, and the author of many articles in professional journals.


Town and Davis
(Est. New York 1829-1835)
One of the earliest American architectural partnerships, the firm of Ithiel Town and Alexander J. Davis was formed in New York in 1829 and lasted until 1835. For eighteen months in 1832-1833, the partnership became Town, Davis, and Dakin, when James H. Dakin joined the firm.
A leading force in the new Revival styles, including Greek, Gothic, Tuscan, and Egyptian, the firm produced several influential designs across a wide spectrum of building types. They created civic, institutional and academic buildings in both urban and suburban settings.
The firm successfully combined the practical experience of Town with the innovations of Davis and the enterprise of Dakin. Ithiel Town, the head of the firm, used his prestige, ability and contacts to obtain many of the firm's commission. He and Dakin generally supervised the work while Davis and Dakin handled most of the creative design details.
Most of the designs were created with equal effort on all parts. Although frequently away from the office, Town usually contributed to all of the important designs. The firm generated a collaborative effort that strongly influenced the development of American nineteenth century architecture.


(Dutert b. Douai, France 1845; d. 1906)
Charles Louis Ferdinand Dutert was born in Douai, France in 1845. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, winning the Grand Prix in 1869. He eventually became a teacher at the same institution.
Like many of his contemporaries, Dutert gained fame as an architect as the result of one spectacular design. In collaboration with the engineer Victor Contamin, he designed the Galerie des Machines at the Paris International Exhibition. The culmination of a series of metal-and-glass designs, the Galerie gained acclaim for both its phenomenal scale and its three-hinged arch structure.
Although Dutert designed other buildings, none matched the Galerie in scale or innovation. Critics have included this building as a key monument in the history of modern architecture because its vast scale was realizable only through new technological methods.
Dutert died in 1906.


Paeonius and Demetrios
Archiects in ancient Greece. Demetrios is believed to have been a priest at the Temple of Artemis.
Domitian
Architect in ancient Rome.
Balkrishna Doshi
(b. Poona, India 1927)
Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi was born in Poona, India in 1927. After he completed his studies at J. J. School of Art, Bombay in 1950 he became a senior designer on Le Corbusier's projects in Ahmedabad and Chandigarh. In 1956 he established a private practice in Vastu-Shilpa, Ahmedabad and in 1962 he established the Vastu-Shilpa Foundation for Environmental Design. He also founded and designed the School of Architecture and Planning in Ahmedabad. Doshi has worked in partnership as Stein, Doshi & Bhalla since 1977.
Over the years Doshi has created architecture that relies on a sensitive adoption and refinement of modern architecture within an Indian context. The relevancy of his environmental and urban concerns make him unique as both a thinker and teacher. Architectural scale and massing, as well as a clear sense of space and community mark most of his work. Doshi's architecture provides one of the most important models for modern Indian architecture.
A. E. Doyle
(b. Santa Cruz, California 1877; d. 1928)
Albert Ernest Doyle was born in Santa Cruz, California in 1877. While still young, he moved with his family to Portland, Oregon. In Oregon he apprenticed with the architectural firm of Whidden and Lewis where he stayed until 1903. In 1903 he attended Columbia University and worked in the office of Henry Bacon. Three years later, he received a travelling scholarship which allowed him to tour Europe.
In 1907 Doyle opened an office in Portland with his partner, William B. Patterson. Within a year, the firm received its first major commission. Many commissions followed. Doyle designed his commercial buildings in a mixture of revival styles with emphasis placed on the Italian Renaissance. In addition to his eclectic urban designs, Doyle created a series of beach cottages on the Oregon and Washington coast that inspired the regional style developed in the 1930s by other architects.
Doyle died in 1928.
Duany and Plater-Zyberk
(Duany b. Cuba 1949) (Plater-Zyberk b. Princeton, NJ 1950) Contemporary U.S. architects and planners, they are among the leaders of a revived New Town movement, or "New Urbanism", in the United States.
Willem Marinus Dudok
(b. Amsterdam 1884; d. Hilversum, Amsterdam 1974)
Willem Dudok was born in Amsterdam in 1884. After graduating as an engineer from the Royal Military Academy at Breda, Dudok spent the first ten years of his architectural career constructing defensive forts and military barracks for the Dutch army. In 1927 he became the City Architect for Hilversum, near Amsterdam, in The Netherlands. In this capacity he coordinated the expansion of the town and designed the principal public buildings.
For most of the buildings he designed within Hilversum, Dudok borrowed extensively from Frank Lloyd Wright and the American Prairie School. He utilized the brick architecture and the dramatic asymmetrical massing of geometrical forms common to this style. While designing these public commissions, he continued to work in private practice.
Dudok received the RIBA Gold Medal in 1935 and the AIA Gold Medal in 1955. He died in Hilversum in 1974.
John Dobson
(b. England 1787; d. England 1865)
John Dobson was born in 1787. A talented watercolorist, engineer, and surveyor, he learned to build from David Stephenson, studied perspective under Boniface Musso, and learned to paint in the studio of John Verley. His architectural style helped him become one of the most prolific Victorian architects in England. During his career, he worked on over fifty churches and nearly one hundred houses.
Dobson created buildings which seemed to meld archeology with engineering. He combined Greek Revival detailing with glass and iron in a way few architects of his generation could match. His neoclassical country houses, in particular, exhibit a genuine talent for abstraction. His work as the planner of Victorian Newcastle-on-Tyne rivals the designs of Georgian Edinburgh and Regency London for establishing a particular style.
Dobson died in 1865.
Bijvoet and Duiker
(Duiker b. The Hague, Netherlands 1890; d. Amsterdam, Netherlands 1935; Bijvoet b. Amsterdam, Netherlands 1889; d. Haarlem, Netherlands 1979)
Johannes Duiker and Bernard Bijvoet were students at the Delft School of Architecture where they achieved early fame by winning the competition for the Fine Art State Academy in 1919. Although not built, this scheme set a high standard for their future work.
As true progressives Duiker and Bijvoet were closely linked to the De Stijl group, whose ideas developed during the First World War. Duiker was also closely associated with the functionalist Opbouw group.
Early on, the pair succumbed to the immense influence which Frank Lloyd Wright had exerted after the publication of the Wasmuth volumes. However, they eventually adapted a style more in pace with the International style.
The works of Duiker and Bijvoet testified to the successful melding of avant-garde architecture and a utopian society. Their ideas and works survive today in the work of architects like Aldo Van Eyck and Hermann Hertzberger.
Charles Eames
(b. St. Louis, Missouri 1907; d. St. Louis 1978)
Charles Ormand Eames was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1907. In 1924 he began his architectural studies at Washington University. In 1929 he traveled to Europe where he came in contact with the theories of the Modern Movement. Upon his return, he established the firm of Gray and Eames.
Eames' work from the 1930s consisted mainly of designs for stained glass, textiles, furniture and ceramics. In 1938 he received a fellowship to Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, where he studied under and collaborated with Eero Saarinen.
In 1941 Eames moved to California with his wife, Ray Kaiser. Once there, they formed a design partnership that covered a wide spectrum of design fields.
Two houses he completed in this period creatively applied a Japanese simplicity to modern buildings. Eames continued to work as an architect until the mid 1960s after which he concentrated on furniture design, film-making and exhibition design.
Eames died in St. Louis, Missouri in 1978.
Gustave Eiffel
(b. Dijon, France 1832; d. Paris, France 1923)
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was born in Dijon France in 1832. He graduated from the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, Paris in 1855 and joined a Belgian firm which specialized in railway equipment. He established an independent practice in 1864 after which he established a career as an engineer-contractor.
Eiffel was a master of elegantly constructed wrought-iron lattices, which formed the basis of his bridge constructions and led to his project for the Eiffel Tower. He was mainly recognized as an engineer and bridge builder.
Eiffel died in Paris in 1923.
Peter Eisenman
(b. Newark, New Jersey 1932)
Peter Eisenman was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1932. He studied at Cornell and Columbia Universities and then at Cambridge University in England. He taught at Cambridge, Princeton and the Cooper Union in New York, where he was founder and director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies.
Until recently, few of his designs had been built. As a result, most attention has focused on his architectural ideas which attempt to create contextually disconnected architecture.
Eisenman has always sought somewhat obscure parallels between his architectural works and philosophical or literary theory. His earlier houses were "generated" from a transformation of forms related to the tenuous relationship of language to an underlying structure.
Eisenman's latter works show a sympathy with the "anti-humanist" ideas of deconstructionism.
Sedad Eldem
(b. Turkey 1908)
Born in Turkey in 1908, Sedat Hakki Eldem studied in the West before he returned to Istanbul to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1932 he became an assistant professor at the Academy. In this capacity he acted as a major catalyst in the development of Turkish architecture.
In the early 1930s, Eldem rejected the Beaux-Arts tradition and gave his support to early functionalism. He developed a style partially based on the nationalistic atmosphere of the new post-war Turkish Republic. During the 1940s, Eldem shifted his focus to the vernacular architecture of the late Ottoman period in both his teaching and professional life.
Borrowing from the plans of old Turkish houses, Eldem designed a series of houses in Istanbul using modern materials and a functionalist geometry. After 1950 Eldem integrated a functionalist vocabulary with elements of a traditional Turkish vernacular, but structural expression remained a priority.
For Eldem, creation of a modern national style remained a supreme goal which led him to emphasize form rather than function in his design. He has always remained a sensitive designer of facades and details.
Since his retirement in 1978, Eldem has published materials on traditional Turkish domestic architecture.
Craig Ellwood
(b. Clarendon, Texas 1922; d. 1992)
Craig Ellwood was born in Clarendon, Texas in 1922. A building cost estimator, Ellwood worked for a construction company in Los Angeles as a cost estimator while he took night classes at the University of California at Los Angeles Extension Division. One year before completing his studies he established Craig Ellwood Associates in Los Angeles.
Craig Ellwood learned about building in steel and plastic sheet before he studied architectural theory. This gave him an understanding of steel construction that his contemporaries from architectural schools rarely acquired.
Ellwood's designs incorporated the use of steel with thoughtful detailing and craftsmanship. He developed the trademark structural device of an exposed warren truss that used small members to span big distances.
In the 1960s, Ellwood was highly influenced by the simple architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. However, Ellwood was closer aesthetically to the light-steel cages of Charles Eames than to the structural formalism of Mies van der Rohe.
Carl Ludvig Engel
(b. Germany 1778; d. Finland 1840)
Born in Charlottenburg, Berlin in 1778, Carl Engel trained at the Berlin Institute of Architecture after which he served as town architect of Tallinn, Estonia. In 1815 he traveled through Leningrad. Through connections made on his journey through Russia, Engel received a commission to reconstruct the city of Turku, Finland which was then under Russian control.
In 1816 Engel moved to Helsinki, Finland where he produced several notable building in the formal neoclassical style that he had learned in Leningrad. In 1924 he was appointed Director of Public Housing. During his tenure as Director, he produced a pattern book on urban planning that had a lasting influence on Finnish planning and urbanism.
Although he mainly worked in Finland, where he established a neoclassical style that dominated Finnish architecture for a hundred years, Engel acquired his mastery of the neoclassical language in Russia. Engel's German origins balanced the Russian traditionalism he adopted from his travels in Leningrad. The scale and elegance he borrowed from Russian and German architecture helped him define an emerging Finnish style.
Engel worked as Director of Public Housing until his death in Finland in 1840.
Arthur C. Erickson
(b. Vancouver, Canada 1924)
Arthur Erickson was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1924. Considered one of Canada's greatest architects, Erickson studied at the University of British Columbia and McGill University, Montreal. After traveling extensively in Europe and the Far East, he returned to practice in Vancouver. In 1953, he established a practice which eventually expanded to Toronto and the Middle East. Erickson/ Massey Associates was formed in 1963 after Erickson and Geoffrey Massey won a design competition.
Contributing to the rebirth of Modernism within Canada, Erickson has shown considerable skill in adapting and extending principles drawn from Le Corbusier. He has shown a unique ability to handle large-scale contemporary architecture in the urban context by creating bold architectural forms that exploit the effects of various materials and structural systems.
Since 1972, as principal of Arthur Erickson Architects, Erickson has continued the search for large-scale images. In his later works, Erickson has generated a new spatial complexity in which typically simple detailing and neutral colors set off objects within the space.
Johann Fisher von Erlach
(b. Graz, Austria 1656; d. Vienna, Austria 1723)
An architect, sculptor, and architectural historian, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, was born in Graz, Austria, in July 1656. Fischer left Graz to study Rome in the early 1670s.
Initially unsuccessful in Rome, Fischer eventually found work with the painter and architect Phillip Schor. Through Schor, Fischer expanded his knowledge and gained access to the important artists and patrons of the late-baroque period. In 1687, Fischer returned to Austria and settled in the capital city of the Hapsburg Empire, Vienna.
An enthusiastic student of architectural history, Fischer studied and sketched ancient Roman ruins, as well as architecture of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. In his written history of architecture, Historic Architecture, Fischer used testimonies taken from contemporary historians and etchings on old medals for accuracy. The knowledge and wit of the volume make it unique among eighteenth-century architecture books.
Considered Austria's greatest baroque architect, Fischer von Erlach synthesized elements from the full-baroque, the late-baroque and early classicism. Despite his eclectic approach, Fischer's great buildings exhibit great originality and were quickly adapted by the Hapsburg dynasty as the official court architecture.
A man of many talents, Fischer was the last great artist and architect of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Throughout his career, Fischer received commissions for sculpture, architecture, and gardens.
Fischer died in Vienna in 1723.
Ralph Erskine
(b. London, England 1914; d. at age 91, March 16, 2005)
Ralph Erskine, a Swedish-British architect, was born in London in 1914. He graduated from the Regent Street Polytechnic in 1938 and moved to Sweden a year later, shortly before the outbreak of World War II.
After the war and after further study at the Academy of Arts in Stockholm, he established offices in Sweden where he has designed a large number of houses, schools, apartments and urban planning schemes. In his work, Erskine has developed an organic and expressive architecture partly inspired by Swedish Empiricism and British community planning.
Erskine has experimented with designs that depend on user participation and environmental compatibility. In his later works, he has been experimenting with climatically controlled building environments. Erskine typically creates an architecture of contrasts in which he uses a variety of forms and materials to juxtapose heavy and light elements.
Joseph Esherick, EHDD
(b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1914; d. December 18, 1998)
Joseph Esherick was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1914. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1937. He worked in a private architectural practice in San Francisco until 1953 after which he assumed presidency of Joseph Esherick and Associates. From 1972 until the 1990s he was president of Esherick, Homsey, Dodge, and Davis (EHDD) in San Francisco. He was awarded the AIA Gold Medal in 1989. He was also an influential professor of architecture at UC Berkeley for many years, through the mid-1980's.
In a quiet break with tradition, including the formalism of the Bauhaus, Joseph Esherick reverted to a practical design approach, continuing and extending a Bay Area tradition pioneered by Bernard Maybeck, and extended by William Wurster and some contemporaries. Esherick rejected formal concepts of beauty and designs his buildings in relation to their specific purposes. He attempted to find new solutions to the problems of form and function. Critical of the aesthetic theory of design, Esherick emphasizes the functionality of a building over its appearance.
Esherick displayed an enormous diversity within his work. By approaching each project with a clean mental slate, he allowed himself tremendous creative breadth. He combined a utilitarian design philosophy, a desire to have his buildings reflect and merge with nature and the vernacular design of California to create successful, liveable buildings. He has been integral to the establishment of the Bay Area tradition in architecture.
Aldo van Eyck
(b. Driebergen, Holland 1918; d. 1999)
Aldo van Eyck was born in Driebergen, Holland in 1918. Although educated in England during his youth, he eventually returned to Zurich and attended the ETH. He taught at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture from 1954 to 1959, and he was a professor at the Delft Technical College from 1966 to 1984. He also was editor of the architecture magazine Forum from 1959 to 1963 and in 1967.
An active member of CIAM and then in 1954 a co-founder of "Team 10", Van Eyck has lectured throughout Europe and northern America stressing the need to reject Functionalism and attacking the lack of originality in most post-war Modernism. Van Eyck's position as co-editor of the Dutch magazine Forum helped publicize the "Team 10" call for a return to humanism within architectural design.
While van Eyck demands an empirical search for original solutions in most of his written works, he shows a distinct preference for Structuralist as well as 'humanist' values within his completed projects. With his partners, van Eyck has generated a subtle, innovative, and appropriate architecture that effectively meets user needs.
Van Eyck received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1990.
Hassan Fathy
(b. Egypt, 1899; d. 1989)
Hassan Fathy was born in Egypt in 1899. He established a private practice in Cairo where he also worked as professor of Fine Arts and Head of the Architectural School, at the University of Cairo.
An Egyptian architect who devoted himself to housing the poor in developing nations, Hassan Fathy deserves study by anyone involved in rural improvement. Fathy worked to create an indigenous environment at a minimal cost, and in so doing to improve the economy and the standard of living in rural areas.
Fathy utilized ancient design methods and materials. He integrated a knowledge of the rural Egyptian economic situation with a wide knowledge of ancient architectural and town design techniques. He trained local inhabitants to make their own materials and build their own buildings.
Climatic conditions, public health considerations, and ancient craft skills also affected his design decisions. Based on the structural massing of ancient buildings, Fathy incorporated dense brick walls and traditional courtyard forms to provide passive cooling.
Sverre Fehn
(b. Kongsberg, Norway 1924)
Sverre Fehn was born in Kongsberg, Norway in 1924. He graduated from the Oslo School of Architecture in 1948 and immediately established a private practice in Oslo. He has been a Professor at the Oslo School of Architecture since 1970.
As a prominent post-war architect, Fehn helped influence the architecture of Norway. Along with several other architects of his generation, he created a new architecture based on the Modern Movement, but expressed with regional forms and materials. This regenerated style helped overcome the pre- and post-war nationalism that had generated a weakened aesthetic. Closely involved with CIAM, Carre Bleu, and Team 10, Fehn is often considered the most gifted practitioner among these groups.
Never dogmatic in his beliefs, Fehn instills a human quality within his buildings that moves beyond the definitive Modern Movement statement. This quality exists in most of his buildings which exhibit great simplicity while also utilizing poetic qualities of light and subtleties of form.
Fehn explored the ideas of Japanese architecture in some deceptively simple timber houses which displayed a great sensitivity to the needs of the client and which all show a freedom from typical house plans. In his more recent works, he has exhibited a bold understanding of form and materials that has allowed him to continue his search for a new architectural language.
Henry Hoare II & Henry Flitcroft
(Flitcroft b. 1687; d. 1769)
Henry Flitcroft was born in 1687, the son of a laborer employed in the royal service at Hampton Court. He trained as a joiner before attracting the earl's attention with his talent for drawing. Lord Burlington employed him as a draftsman and clerk, and in 1726 obtained a post for him in the Office of Works.
Flitcroft designed no major public works during his career, but his private commissions included country houses, town houses, churches, and garden buildings. An able administrator and practitioner, his clients included government officials and the aristocracy.
Flitcroft's early training under Burlington and his acquaintance with the designs of Inigo Jones and Andrea Palladio effected all of his work. Although he occasionally discarded strict Palladian discipline, Flitcroft's designs exhibit the simple forms and detailing characteristic of Burlington's works. Although not an innovator, Flitcroft created sound designs in an existing style.
Henry Flitcroft died in 1769.
O'Neil Ford
(b. Pink Hill, Texas 1905; d. 1982)
O'Neil Ford was born in Pink Hill, Texas in 1905. He studied at the North Texas State University in Denton and then worked as a draftsman for David Williams in Dallas. He entered into private practice in 1934 and worked with a series of partners within the state of Texas from 1936.
Considered one of the nation's best unknown architects, Ford created designs in a vernacular style that lacks the cutting edge innovation that could gain him international notice. With quiet, well-crafted architecture, Ford attempted to consider several possibilities in order to achieve the best total design. He successfully resolved user needs and environmental requirements with a humane, non-pretentious design ethic.
Bricks, glass, wood, and stone constituted Ford's principal building materials. Climatic conditions dictated the forms of most of his designs, while preservation became a major driving force in his works. Indeed, his work in Texas has helped to make preservation a viable alternative to the destructiveness of "urban renewal".
Norman Foster
(b. Manchester, England 1935)
Norman Foster was born in Manchester, England in 1935. He received his architectural training at Manchester University School of Architecture, which he entered at age 21, and Yale University. He worked with Richard Rogers and Sue Rogers and his wife, Wendy Foster, as a member of "Team 4" until Foster Associates was founded in London in 1967.
The "High Tech" vocabulary of Foster Associates shows an uncompromising exploration of technological innovations and forms. The firm's work also shows a dedication to architectural detailing and craftsmanship. Their designs emphasize the repetition of industrialized "modular" units in which prefabricated off-site-manufactured elements are frequently employed. The firm often designs specialist components for individual projects.
Foster was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1983, and in 1990 the RIBA Trustees Medal was made for the Willis Faber Dumas building. He was knighted in 1990, and recieved the Gold Medal of the AIA in 1994. On June 7, 1999, Sir Norman will receive the Pritzer Architecture Prize.
Foster and Partners currently has offices in London, Berlin, and Singapore, with over 500 employees worldwide.
Eugene Freyssinet
(b. Correze, France 1879; d. Saint-Martin-Vesubie, France 1962)
Eugene Freyssinet was born in Corneze, France in 1879. He studied at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees in Paris before he was apprenticed to the engineer Rabut. He served as an engineer in the French Army from 1904 to 1907 and again from 1914 to 1918. Between his two stints in the army he worked as a road engineer for local authorities in Central France. From 1918 until 1928 he worked as Director for the Societe des Enterprises Limousin in Paris after which he established his own practice.
Freyssinet created innovative architecture using reinforced concrete as his main material. More an engineer than an architect, Freyssinet still managed to introduce several collaborative architectural works. His projects generally revolved around an experimental search for a common language. His designs allowed for a free expression of materials and spaces while working within the limits of technology.
Considered the "father of pre-stressed concrete", Freyssinet died in Saint-Martin-Vesubie, France in 1962.
Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao
(Fuller b. July 12 1893; d. July 1, 1983) Buckminster Fuller invented the geodesic dome, and a wide range of other paradigm-shifting machines and structural systems. He was especially interested in high-strength-to-weight designs, with a maximum of utility for minimum of material. His designs and engineering philosophy are part of the foundation of contemporary high-tech design aesthetics.
Frank Furness
(b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1839; d. Medea, Pennsylvania 1912)
Frank Furness was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1839. He worked as a draughtsman in the Philadelphia office of John Fraser, after which he studied at the New York atelier of Richard Morris Hunt (1859-61). He set up professional practices with a series of different partners starting in 1867.
Furness never had the opportunity to travel abroad so his style, although influenced by Ruskin and Viollet-le-duc, achieved an originality that might have been impossible with first hand experience of European architecture. Eclectic and boldly polychromatic, his buildings were often dramatically over-scaled and boldly articulated with a variety of sculptural forms and materials.
The lavish Victorian style employed by Furness during the late nineteenth century proved unattractive to twentieth century taste and few of his buildings remain in their original forms.
Furness died in Medea, Pennsylvania in 1912.
Ange-Jacques Gabriel
(b. Paris, France 1698; d. Paris 1782)
Ange-Jacques Gabriel was born in Paris in 1698. Trained by his father, Jacques Gabriel V, and by Robert de Cotte, he became a member of the Academie Royal de l'Architecturein 1728 and he became the principal assistant to his father as Premier Architecte at Versaille in 1735. He succeeded his father as Premier Architecte in 1742.
Gabriel's work reflects the academic ideal of emulation that existed during the eighteenth century. With his designs he assimilated the lessons of the past and adapted its models to more sophisticated purposes. Much of his work is based on an academic principle of classical proportioning. Throughout his career he followed the fundamental belief that progress depends upon reason and discipline.
The principal royal architect for most of the reign of Louis XV, Gabriel promoted the transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism through the evolution of the Style Louis XVI. On the premise that the role of ornament is essentially the articulation of structure, the sumptuous embellishment of his work in the 1740s gave way to the noble simplicity of his latter works.
Gabriel died in Paris in 1782.
Charles Garnier
(b. Paris, France 1825; d. Paris 1898)
Charles Garnier was born of humble origins in Paris in 1825. He studied at the Ecole Gratuite de Dessin in the evenings until 1840 when he entered the atelier of Lebas. Later he worked as a draughtsman for Viollet-le-Duc.
In 1842 Garnier entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts where he eventually won the Grand Prix de Rome. He studied for five years at the Academy in Rome where he became interested in the "pageantry of Roman society". He rounded out his architectural education with a visit to Greece and Turkey in 1852.
Back in Paris, Garnier received few private commissions but accepted several municipal posts including that of architect of the fifth and sixth arrondissemnets. In 1861 Garnier entered and won the competition for the new Paris opera house. His design reflected the aspirations of the Second Empire with its rich coloring and decoration. From his studies of Roman pageantry, Garnier had developed a great sense of occasion and drama which when coupled with a logical floor plan was used to good effect in the opera. It quickly became known as the "Style Napoleon III".
Robert Gatje
Contemporary U.S. architect Robert Gatje attended Deep Springs College in California as an undergraduate. He practiced for many years in the firm of Marcel Breuer. Gatje was a founding partner of a successor firm after Breuer's retirement. Most recently, he has practised in the firm of Richard Meier.
Antoni Gaudi
(b. Reus, Spain 1852; d. Barcelona, Spain 1926)
The son of a coppersmith, Antoni Gaudi was born in Reus, Spain in 1852. He studied at the Escola Superior d'Arquitectura in Barcelona and designed his first major commission for the Casa Vincens in Barcelona using a Gothic Revival style that set a precedent for his future work.
Over the course of his career, Gaudi developed a sensuous, curving, almost surreal design style which established him as the innovative leader of the Spanish Art Nouveau movement. With little regard for formal order, he juxtaposed unrelated systems and altered established visual order. Gaudi's characteristically warped form of Gothic architecture drew admiration from other avant-garde artists.
Although categorized with the Art Nouveau, Gaudi created an entirely original style. He died in Barcelona in 1926.
Frank Gehry
(b. Toronto, Ontario, Canada 1929)
Frank Gehry was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1929. He studied at the Universities of Southern California and Harvard, before he established his first practice, Frank O. Gehry and Associates in 1963. In 1979 this practice was succeeded by the firm Gehry & Krueger Inc.
Over the years, Gehry has moved away from a conventional commercial practice to a artistically directed atelier. His deconstructed architectural style began to emerge in the late 1970s when Gehry, directed by a personal vision of architecture, created collage-like compositions out of found materials. Instead of creating buildings, Gehry creates ad-hoc pieces of functional sculpture.
Gehry's architecture has undergone a marked evolution from the plywood and corrugated-metal vernacular of his early works to the distorted but pristine concrete of his later works. However, the works retain a deconstructed aesthetic that fits well with the increasingly disjointed culture to which they belong.
In the large-scale public commissions he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic, Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.
Donald Gellespie
Contemporary U.S. architect.
James Gibbs
(b. 1682; d. 1754)
James Gibbs studied in Rome with Carlo Fontana.
Cass Gilbert
(b. Zanesville, Ohio 1859; d. New York, N.Y. 1934)
Cass Gilbert was born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1859. Introduced to architecture as a draughtsman and carpenter's assistant, Gilbert enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1878 as a pupil of William Ware. After studying for two years, he took a European tour. Upon his return he joined the firm of McKim, Mead & White. In 1882 he established a partnership with James Knox Taylor in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The fairly pedestrian designs created by Gilbert's firm did not prevent it from gaining popularity. The majority of buildings the firm designed were gothicized skyscrapers, the most famous of which was the Woolworth Building.
Works designed by the firm during the early 1930s were competent Classical buildings which lack the originality of such contemporary Modernists as Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Irving Gill
(b. Syracuse, New York 1870; d. Carlsbad, California 1936)
Irving Gill was born in Syracuse, New York in 1870. The son of a building contractor, Gill attended public schools in New York but never went to college. In 1890 he joined the firm of Adler & Sullivan where Louis H. Sullivan influenced his outlook on the need for an "American Architecture".
In 1893 Gill moved to San Francisco. Two years later he established a private practice that was highly influenced by the native vernacular and traditional materials of the region. He worked in partnership with W. S. Hebbard from 1898 to 1906 and with Louis J. Gill from 1914 to 1916.
In his early California years, Gill practiced a variety of eclectic styles, ranging from Beaux-Arts to Shingle Style to Prairie Style. In 1906, when he ended his partnership with Hebbard, Gill began to make bold use of concrete and hollow tile, a technique that became one of the hallmarks of his career. He created a relatively inexpensive tilt-wall construction system that allowed for a great deal of artistic expression. This system allowed him to modify the existing California mission style into a simplified modern style.
A tireless designer of small-scale, low-cost housing projects, his career went into a decline after World War I when there was a revival of a Spanish neo-baroque style within southern California.
Gill died in Carlsbad, California in 1936.
Romaldo Giurgola
(b. Rome, Italy 1920)
Romaldo Giurgola was born in Rome in 1920. He graduated from the School of Architecture of the University of Rome and received a Masters degree in architecture from Columbia University. Since 1958 he has worked as a partner with Ehrman Mitchell as part of Mitchell/Giurgola Architects in Philadelphia. The firm expanded to New York in 1966.
An academician trained in the tradition of the Beaux-Arts, Giurgola sees architecture as a continuous progression based on historical precedents. In his design process, he develops a clear synthesis of external constraints and works to create functional and visual relationships that remain in context. His building becomes part of both a social and an architectural environment.
Giurgola shies away from fashion or what he calls "perennial eclecticism", Although he bases his buildings on the idea of architectural progression, Giurgola establishes a sense of propriety free from style or time. While many architects enjoy creating an instant style, Giurgola stresses the importance of the process.
Giurgola's notions of order emphasizes the importance of place and sympathizes with the value of conceptualization within the design process.
Bruce Goff
(b. Alton, Kansas 1904; d. Tyler, Texas 1982)
Bruce Goff was born in Alton, Kansas in 1904. Apprenticed at the age of twelve to Rush, Endacott and Rush of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Goff became a partner with the firm in 1930. Self-educated and exceptionally creative, his designs often depended on creative free-association and borrowed materials.
Without academic credentials Goff became a professor of architecture at the University of Oklahoma. In his capacity as teacher, Goff emphasized a design curriculum based on creativity. Within his private practice, Goff introduced a form of organic architecture that was sensitive to both client needs and site constraints.
With very strong convictions about the importance of individuality, Goff created isolated one-family houses in tree enshrouded pockets of the Great Plains. Although Goff's buildings relied on a combination of structural clarity and spatial complexity, they also used a form of decorative detailing that contrasted with the typical simplicity of twentieth century buildings.
Goff died in Tyler, Texas in 1982.
Bertrand Goldberg
(b. Chicago, Illinois 1913; d. 1997)
Bertrand Goldberg was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1913. He studied at Harvard University, at the Bauhaus, and at the Armour Institute of Technology (now Illinois Institute of Technology). The acting principal of Bertrand Goldberg Associates in Chicago since 1937, Goldberg established a branch office in Boston in 1964.
Although Goldberg's early work was a direct outgrowth of his training at the Bauhaus and his work with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, he eventually rebelled against what he calls "the engineer's module applied to society." He considers rectilinear shapes directly opposed to most human activity and instead advocates nuclear forms.
Goldberg believes that circular buildings serve activity better and help create community. He also claims that circular buildings provide more efficient wind resistance, more direct mechanical distribution and more usable interior square footage. Complaining that many architect's structurally misuse concrete, he created curvilinear experimentations in concrete shell structure.
Over the years, Goldberg developed a theory of kinetic space based on nonparallel walls that set a space in motion. A true student of the principles, if not the forms of the German Bauhaus, Goldberg remains virtually without a following despite being widely published and well-known.
Myron Goldsmith/ SOM
One of the design principals of the large U.S. firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill.
. P. Golosov
(Ilya b. 1883; d. 1945; Pantelemon b. 1882; d. 1945)
Ilya Golosov was born in 1883. His brother Pantelemon was born in 1882. Both attended the Stroganove College and the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture and both lived and worked in Moscow throughout their lives. Both of the Golosovs taught: Pantelemon at the Moscow Institute of Architecture and Ilya at the Vkhutemas, the Moscow Polytechnic, and the Moscow Institute of Architecture.
Of the two, Ilya Golosov exhibited the most creativity. Although Pantelemon generated professional designs in neoclassic and Constructivist styles, he lacked his brother's innovation with form. Ilya created bold, sculptural designs that utilized contrasting cylindrical and orthogonal forms in a new and imaginative way.
With the official instigation of Social Realism, Ilya Golosov reverted to an architecture of historical imitation. As a member of the pro-Constructivist Association of Contemporary Architects, he opposed the strictly functionalist position then advanced by many contemporaries including his brother.
Only Ilya built extensively. The majority of his works took place during the Stalinist era, when he designed seven major government commissions.
Both brothers died in 1945.
Bertram Goodhue
(b. Pomfret, Connecticut 1869; d. New York, N.Y. 1924)
Bertram Goodhue was born in Pomfret, Connecticut in 1869. He began his architectural career at the age of fifteen in the New York office of Renwick, Aspinwall and Russell. By 1898 he had established a partnership with Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson. In the same period he collaborated with Ralph Cram on a magazine of criticism entitled The Knight Errant..
Over the course of his career, Goodhue designed numerous churches, houses and public buildings, gradually moving away from the dense Gothic style he adapted earlier in his career towards a lighter Romanesque idiom. Towards the end of his career, Goodhue developed an personal contemporary style, but his search for an innovative style for his time was more successful in terms of generated ideas rather than through his buildings.
Bruce Graham/ SOM
(b. Bogota, Colombia 1925)
Bruce Graham was born in Bogota, Colombia of American parents in 1925. He studied at the University of Dayton, Ohio and at the Case School of Applied Sciences in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1948 with a degree in architecture. Following a stint in the offices of Holabird and Roche, he accepted the position of Chief of Design at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. In 1960 he became a general partner.
One of the leading American designers of high-rise buildings, Graham played a leading role in establishing the Miesian building principles which would affect Chicago commercial architecture during the 1950s and 1960s. One of the most enthusiastic practitioners of the Miesian manner, he never actually studied with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s Graham developed several significant skyscrapers which utilized the revolutionary tubular frame principle. In the late 1970s Graham and SOM expanded internationally. As the popularity of the Miesian look waned, Graham shifted to a more lyrical and complex building style.
Michael Graves
(b. Indianapolis, Indiana 1934)
Michael Graves was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1934. He studied at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio and at Harvard University. After working as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome for two years, he started his own practice in Princeton, New Jersey. He became a professor at Princeton University in 1972.
A member of the "New York Five", Graves re-interpreted the rational style that had been introduced by Le Corbusier in the 1920s into a neoclassical style. By the mid-1970s, Graves had become less concerned with the roots of Modernism and had developed a wide-ranging eclecticism in which he abstracted historical forms and emphasized the use of color.
Michael Graves generates an ironic, vision of Classicism in which his buildings have become classical in their mass and order. Although influenced by the fundamentalists in developing an architectural language, Graves has become an an opponent of modern works who uses humor as an integral part of his architecture. Indeed, many of his recent designs seem to celebrate architectural pastiche and kitsch.
Greene and Greene
(Charles b. Brighton, Ohio 1868; d. Carmel, California, 1957; Henry b. Brighton, Ohio 1870; d. Altadena, California, 1954)
The partnership of Greene & Greene was established in Pasadena, California in 1894. Comprised of two brothers, Charles Sumner Greene (born in Brighton, Ohio in 1868) and Henry Mather Greene (born in Brighton, Ohio in 1870), the partnership flourished until 1922 when both began practicing independently.
Both Charles and Henry attended the Manual Training High School of Washington University in St. Louis where they gained critical educational experience. They also attended the MIT school of Architecture from 1886 to 1888, but left because they felt creatively stifled. After a two-year apprenticeship in Boston where they became familiar with the Boston shingle style, the brothers formed their own firm.
The most exceptional work put out by Greene & Greene occurred between 1903 and 1909. During this period they created houses of exceptional craftsmanship and refinement. All the houses were notable for their articulated surfaces and oriental sensitivities. Informal and regionally relevant, the designs by Greene & Greene extolled the natural lifestyle of Southern California.
The brothers complimented each other architecturally with Charles providing the imagination and artistic eye and Henry providing the sense of order and conceptual vision. Separately, they were regarded as highly as they were when they worked together.
Walter Burley Griffin
(b. Maywood, Illinois 1876; d. Lucknow, India 1937)
Walter Burley Griffin was born in Maywood, Illinois in 1876. He worked for Frank Lloyd Wright before he established a practice with Barry Byrne. A leading member of the Prairie School, Griffin exhibited a level of maturity and independence that separated him from many of his contemporaries. In 1914, Griffin moved to Australia after winning the competition for the new capital city, Canberra.
In contrast to Wright, Griffin pioneered the development of vertical space. Although confined, his interiors provided a sense of spatial variety and interest through their manipulation of multi-level space. His works reveal a preference for solid, compact forms and simple shapes.
Griffin showed a talent for planning suburban neighborhoods and cities in relation to the landscape. His schemes mixed formal and informal elements and included local flora. He invariably introduced axial roads and paths to order the meandering spaces within his plans.
In 1917 Griffin patented a workable system of concrete blocks that could be used in the construction of houses. From 1935 until his death in 1937, Griffin worked in Lucknow, India.
Nicholas Grimshaw
Nicholas Grimshaw is a sophisticated contemporary British architect whose works contribute significantly to the ongoing definition and evolution of the High Tech Modern mode.
Walter Gropius
(b. Berlin, Germany 1883; d. Boston, Massachusetts 1969)
Walter Gropius was born in Berlin in 1883. The son of an architect, he studied at the Technical Universities in Munich and Berlin. He joined the office of Peter Behrens in 1910 and three years later established a practice with Adolph Meyer. For his early commissions he borrowed from the Industrial Classicism introduced by Behrens.
After serving in the first world war, Gropius became involved with several groups of radical artists that sprang up in Berlin in the winter of 1918. In March 1919 he was elected chairman of the Working Council for Art and a month later was appointed Director of the Bauhaus.
As war again became imminent, Gropius left the Bauhaus and resumed private practice in Berlin. Eventually, he was forced to leave Germany for the United States, where he became a professor at Harvard University. From 1938 to 1941, he worked on a series of houses with Marcel Breuer and in 1945 he founded "The Architect's Collaborative", a design team that embodied his belief in the value of teamwork.
Gropius created innovative designs that borrowed materials and methods of construction from modern technology. This advocacy of industrialized building carried with it a belief in team work and an acceptance of standardization and prefabrication. Using technology as a basis, he transformed building into a science of precise mathematical calculations.
An important theorist and teacher, Gropius introduced a screen wall system that utilized a structural steel frame to support the floors and which allowed the external glass walls to continue without interruption.
Gropius died in Boston, Massachusetts in 1969.
Guarino Guarini
(b. Modena, Italy 1624; d. Milan, Italy 1683)
Guarino Guarini was born in Modena, Italy in 1624. He was ordained a Theatine priest in 1648 and consequently generated most of his designs for the Theatine order.
One of Europe's leading mathematicians, as evidenced in the geometric elaboration of his buildings, Guarini was deeply influenced by the radical designs of Borromini. Developing a similar design approach, he combined "complexity and inventiveness with a profound feeling for color and light" that was highly unusual, but successful.
His early works took him to Sicily, Paris, Portugal and Spain, but his career particularly flourished under the House of Savoy in Turin. Guarini died in Milan, Italy in 1683.
Hector Guimard
(b. Lyon, France 1867; d. New York, N.Y. 1942)
Hector Guimard was born in Lyon, France in 1867. After studying for three years at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and for four years at the Ecole de Beaux Arts, he established his own practice.
Guimard created unassuming and somewhat conventional early works, but after familiarizing himself with some of the architectural theories circulating in the late 1800s, he began to produce some exceptional avant-garde works. The radical ideas of Viollet-Le-Duc and the sinuous architecture of Victor Horta particularly influenced his designs.
Guimard's visit to Horta's Hotel Tassel in 1895 acted as a catalyst to his creativity and inspired a radical re-evaluation of his design approach. Indeed, Guimard's ensuing projects proclaimed the emergence of le style Guimard.. The fluid, curvilinear lines that characterize Guimard's designs became synonymous with the Art Nouveau movement.
Guimard died in New York in 1942.
Gwathmey-Siegel
(Gwathmey b. Charlotte, North Carolina 1938)
Charles Gwathmey was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1938. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture under Louis I. Kahn, Robert Venturi, and Thomas Vreeland. In 1962 he graduated with a masters degree in architecture from Yale University where he studied under Paul Rudolph and James Stirling. Since 1971 he has acted as a partner in Gwathmey and Siegel, with Robert Siegel.
Gwathmey grafts American vernacular with the International Style to create forms that mimic American activity and vitality. He combines the craft of nineteenth century brickwork and American wood construction with the Modern movement's passion for industrial buildings to create sleek, unarticulated surfaces.
Within his buildings, Gwathmey creates a spatial variety that sets him apart from his contemporaries. By slicing through forms and emphasizing verticality, Gwathmey invests his buildings with an exaggerated superscale and sense of infinite space. Despite the volumetric variety, he invests his buildings with a functional appropriateness that recognizes activity patterns, as well as orientation for access and view.
Zaha Hadid
(b. 1950, Bagdad, Iraq)
A leading contemporary woman architect, known for intense, avant-garde, sometimes deconstructivist designs.
"Born in Baghdad, she studied at the Architectural Association in London and was a partner in the Office of Metropolitan Architecture with Rem Koolhaas. Over the years, she has taught at Harvard, Yale, and other universities. She is currently at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. She has been made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture, and a Commander of the British Empire, 2002." — from "Zaha Hadid Pritzker Prize", ArchitectureWeek No. 187
Recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, 2004.
Hadrian
(b. 76; d. 138)
An artist, intellectual and administrator, Hadrian succeeded the Emperor Trajan in 117 A.D. Upon his succession, he gave his interest in architecture full reign by becoming deeply involved with a series of buildings and urban expansions. Indeed, his continuous building activity is recorded in ancient writings and hundreds of dated buildings spread across the Roman empire.
Hadrian regularly founded, expanded and improved cities. The monumental buildings and cities generated in his time owe as much to his administrative and creative abilities as to the abilities of his unknown architects. He provided an enduring influence on architecture both through his artistic contributions and through his imperial patronage.
Lawrence Halprin
(b. New York, N.Y. 1916)
Lawrence Halprin was born in New York City in 1916. He attended Cornell University, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard University from which he graduated in 1942 with a Bachelors in Landscape Architecture. Following an apprenticeship with Thomas Church during which he helped develop the contemporary California garden concept, Halprin opened his own office in 1949. Since 1976 he has been a partner with Sue Yung Li Ikeda.
Halprin worked at a series of scales from sculptural fountains to urban renewal schemes to regional planning. He created landscapes available to all segments of society and generated on the basis of final user needs.
Halprin considered the design process as important as the end result. He analyzed user needs to create diagrams and designs. He developed a design methodology involving client and user in which their desires were synthesized into a final design statement. The organic, free flowing, romantic people spaces that Halprin created owe everything to the lessons of nature and the needs of the twentieth century user.
Hammel, Green and Abrahamson
"Founded in 1953 by Minnesotans Dick Hammel and Curt Green, Bruce Abrahamson joined the following year, and HGA gained a solid footing for their innovative designs of educational facilities. Pioneering concepts such as flexible floor plans, interior court yards, use of vibrant colors, and classrooms with controlled or consistent sunlight, the firm became known as "the school architects," designing a number of award-winning campuses state-wide."
Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (HHPA)
(Hardy b. 1932) (Holzman b. 1940) (Est. 1967)
Hugh Hardy was born in Majorca, Spain in 1932 of American parents. He graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Architecture and with an Master of Fine Arts. After serving with the engineering corps of the United States Navy, he worked as the Architectural Assistant to Jo Mielziner in New York. Since 1967 he has worked in partnership with Hugh Hardy and Malcolm Holzman as Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (HHPA).
In the course of their work Hardy-Holzman-Pfeiffer progressed from small commissions to major civic monuments. The partners emphasized additive growth, transformation and restoration within their designs. The first works of the partners exhibit this collage idea and display an early form of eclecticism.
HHPA use a wider range of materials and architectural styles than their predecessors within the International group. The group generates buildings based a symbolic interpretation of Americana. HHPA borrows from the industrial images of prefabricated components and from the vernacular images of roadway culture and pop art including signs, neon, and lights. What began as camp has slowly developed into a new architectural style.
The firm collages their mixture of styles by colliding forms or superimposing one plan idea onto another. They use shifted grids and diagonals to break free from the box-like character of International architecture and to produce a more informal and humanistic architecture.
Harwell Hamilton Harris
(b. Redlands, California 1903; d. 1990)
Harwell Hamilton Harris was born in Redlands, California in 1903. He studied at Pomona College in Pomona, California and at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles before he worked as a sculptor. In 1928 he entered the Frank Wiggins Trade School and began working with Richard Neutra with whom he remained until 1932. He worked in private practice in Los Angeles until 1951, then worked in Texas and North Carolina,where he has been since 1962.
Using mainly wood, Harris exhibited a sensitivity to site and materials that carried on the American Arts & Crafts movement. He adapted from the vernacular of California and from modular practices of Neutra to create his own personal Southern California style.
In his houses of the 1930s and 1940s Harris expressed his roofing on the interior to create a tension between exterior and interior. Without ignoring exterior forms, he created well-though out, sinuous interior spaces. He created Wrightean floor plans that generally used variations of the cruciform plan.
Harris was able to order and simplify exterior forms that expand the life within. Although his later works In Texas and North Carolina vary in scale and material, they exhibit the same careful exploration of interior to exterior spacing.
Wallace K. Harrison
(b. Worcester, Massachusetts 1895; d. New York, 1981)
Co-founder of the firm Harrison and Abramovitz.
Wallace K. Harrison was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1895. He studied in the atelier of Harvey Corbett in New York and in the atelier of Gustave Umbdenstock in Paris. In 1922 he was awarded the Rotch Traveling Fellowship which allowed him to study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris for one year. Upon his return to the United States, he worked with and for a series of architects in New York.
Although Harrison received little formal training, he eventually became one of the most successful architects of his time. During his lifetime, Harrison, mostly in partnership with Max Abramovitz, designed a wide spectrum of building types including apartments, houses, museums, college buildings and research buildings. Most of Harrison's reputation and success hinged on his involvement with large commissions.
Harrison most clearly made his mark on the architectural field in his design and construction of tall urban office buildings. Although, these buildings generally lack an innovative or pioneering spirit, they act as excellent showcases for straightforward, functional designing and planning.
Harrison died in New York City in 1981.
Hartman-Cox
(Hartman b. Fort Hancock, New Jersey 1936; Cox b. New York, New York 1935)
George Hartman was born in Fort Hancock, New Jersey in 1936. He graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1957 and with a Master of Fine Arts in 1960. Hartman worked for Keyes, Lethbridge and Condon in Washington D.C. until 1964 when he established his own office.
Warren Cox was born in New York City in 1935. He graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1957 and from the Yale School of Architecture in 1961 with an Master of Architecture degree. In 1965 Cox established a partnership with Hartman to form Hartman-Cox Architects.
Early defectors from the Modern Movement, Hartman-Cox quickly adopted their practice to conservative Washington. Although Hartman-Cox preferred startling, hard-edged geometries in their early practice, they now incorporate the Capitol's classicist context into their designs.
Hartman-Cox generates eclectic designs that owe more to site needs than to any strong architectural doctrine. The whole point of their design repertory has been to avoid the minimalism of their leaders. They felt that Modernism limits an architect to a few basic shapes that rarely meet the needs of the site. In keeping with their attitudes toward site and scale, Hartman and Cox prefer molded spaces to free-flowing ones.
Hartman-Cox do not consider themselves post-modernist architects. The firm enjoys an impressive local reputation and a growing national one, but has avoided identification with any architectural group or philosophy.
Nicholas Hawksmoor
(b. Nottinghamshire, England 1661; d. London, England 1736)
Nicholas Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire, England in 1661. Discovered by the plasterer Edward Goudge, he worked as a clerk in the offices of Christopher Wren where he exhibited "early skill and genius in architecture". By 1700 Hawksmoor had become an accomplished and indispensable assistant to Wren. He also assisted Sir John Vanbrugh on the construction of Castle Howard in 1699 and on Blenheim Palace a few years later.
Hawksmoor never visited Italy, but he researched the works of Antiquity, the Renaissance and the English Middle Ages. His studies of the Italian Baroque through engravings helped him to become a major figure of English Baroque.
Although Hawksmoor actually designed few buildings, he acted as a capable colleague to the great architects of his time by providing them with a mastery and knowledge of the works and theories of past architects.
Zvi Hecker
(b. Cracow, Poland 1931)
Zvi Hecker was born in Cracow, Poland in 1931. He studied at the Polytechnic School of Architecture in Cracow for one year before he emigrated to Israel in 1950. He graduated from the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa in 1954 and from the Avni Academy. He established a private practice in 1959, working first with Eldar Sharon and then Alfred Neumann. He has taught worldwide as a visiting professor.
Hecker uses the crystalline geometry of nature as a metaphor for his projects. From his studies in crystallography he developed a means for organizing his architecture. Using the crystalline analogy, Hecker employs extremely flexible close-packing systems in order to develop an architecture responsive to the needs of his time. Since the early 1960s he has been exploring spiral forms, organizing them around a central courtyard with shifted floors surrounded by circular walls.
Hecker likes startling contrasts. Although his design process and his use of repetitive elements are common in modern architecture, he designs with unique forms. His three-dimensional components with their two-dimensional planning grids generate 'brilliantly utilitarian' responses to the mandates of the modern movement.
John Hejduk
(b. New York, N.Y. 1929; d. New York, N.Y. 3 July 2000)
John Hejduk was born in New York in 1929. He studied at the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture and at the University of Cincinnati. He graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design with an Masters in Architecture in 1953. He worked in several architectural offices in New York including the office of I. M. Pei and Partners and the office of A.M. Kinney and Associates. He established his own practice in New York in 1965.
Hejduk explored the harmonic possibilities of architecture in his work. He resolutely pursued a narrowly defined set of themes and variations. At first, he studied cubes, grids, and frames. Next he examined square grids placed within diagonal containers with an occasional curving wall. Finally, he evolved into experiments with flat planes and curved masses in various combinations and colors. His architecture in the early stages was brutalist in style.
Hejduk created attractive objects with little or no socially redeeming value. He detached himself from context, materials, structure, and climate to create artistic environments. In doing so he often ignored the pragmatic considerations that share no part in their exotic surroundings.
While his renderings easily side step the more utilitarian issues of design, his buildings may have failed to overcome the realities of pedestrian requirements. He seemed to be content to allow his explorations to be ends in themselves.
Juan Bautista de Toledo, Juan de Herrera
(Herrera—b. 1530; d. 1567)
Juan Buatista de Toldeo was a Spaniard who studied in Rome with Michelangelo Buonarroti before being recalled to Spain by Phillip II. His major work was the palace of the Escorial, begun by him in 1563, and finished after his death by Juan de Herrera, who became the favorite architect of Phillip II.
Herman Hertzberger
(b. Amsterdam, Netherlands 1932)
Herman Hertzberger was born in Amsterdam in 1932. In 1958, after completing his studies at the Technical University in Delft, he returned to Amsterdam to set up a private practice. From 1965 to 1970, he taught at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam and since 1970 has been a professor at the Technical University in Delft.
"An influential theorist, as well as an innovative designer, Hertzberger is a leading exponent of Structuralism in the Netherlands, editing the journal Forum from 1959-63, a magazine that helped to crystallize the tenets of the emerging Structuralist movement."
Hertzberger adheres to a Structuralist philosophy of "spatial possibility" in which architecture is used to provide a spatial framework through which users influence a building's design. Hertzberger has successfully applied this socially inspired theory to a range of different building types, including housing, schools and offices.
Herzog and de Meuron
(b. Basel, Switzerland 1950)
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
"A building is a building. It cannot be read like a book; it doesn't have any credits, subtitles or labels like picture in a gallery. In that sense, we are absolutely anti-representational. The strength of our buildings is the immediate, visceral impact they have on a visitor."
— Jacques Herzog
"Two architects have been chosen to share the 2001 Pritzker Architecture Prize, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Basel, Switzerland. The two men, both born in Basel in 1950, have nearly parallel careers, attending the same schools and forming a partnership architectural firm, Herzog & de Meuron in 1978.
"Perhaps their highest profile project was attained with the completion last year of the conversion of the giant Bankside power plant on the Thames River in London to a new Gallery of Modern Art for the Tate Museum. It has been widely praised by their peers and the media.
"In the United States, they have completed a winery in the Napa Valley of California that utilizes a mortarless wall of stones encased in wire mesh, and are currently building the Kramlich Residence and Media Collection in that same region. They have three other projects in work in the United States Ñ the headquarters of Prada in New York, the New de Young Museum in San Francisco which is scheduled for completion in 2004, and the Extension for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, scheduled for completion in 2005.
"They have projects in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan, and of course, in their native Switzerland. There they have built residences, several apartment buildings, libraries, schools, a sports complex, a photographic studio, museums, hotels, railway utility buildings as well as office and factory buildings.
"Among their completed buildings, the Ricola cough lozenge factory and storage building in Mulhouse, France stands out for its unique printed translucent walls that provide the work areas with a pleasant filtered light. A railway utility building in Basel, Switzerland called Signal Box has an exterior cladding of copper strips that are twisted at certain places to admit daylight. A library for the Technical University in Eberswalde, Germany has 17 horizontal bands of iconographic images silk screen printed on glass and on concrete. An apartment building on Schötzenmattstrasse in Basel has a fully glazed street facade that is covered by a moveable curtain of perforated latticework. It is impossible to list here all of their noteworthy building projects.
"While these unusual construction solutions are certainly not the only reason for Herzog and de Meuron being selected as the 2001 Laureates", Pritzker Prize jury chairman, J. Carter Brown, commented, "One is hard put to think of any architects in history that have addressed the integument of architecture with greater imagination and virtuosity"."
— Pritzker Prize Award Announcement
"[The work of Herzog and de Meuron is] among the very few architects whose work can be interpreted as an effort to regain architecture's original grounds. A search for primariness, for direct contact with the constructive essence of architecture, characterizes their work and differentiates it from that of others of their generation, with whom they diverge in their emphasis on originality."
— Rafael Moneo, AV monograph on Herzog and de Meuron, 1996
Details
Recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, 2001.
Coop Himmelblau
(Prix b. Vienna 1942) (Swiczinsky b. Poznan, Poland 1944) (Established 1968 Vienna)
Wolf Dieter Prix was born in 1942 in Vienna. Helmut Swiczinsky was born in 1944 in Poznan, Poland. They formed Co-op Himmelblau in Vienna in 1968 as an innovative approach to architecture. They have worked together for over 20 years.
Coop Himmelblau designs each project based on a series of intense discussions which eventually lead to the emergence of a sketch. This sketch, in turn, leads to a fully formed model. The team rarely alters the design from the initial sketch phase. Instead, they transfer it virtually line for line into a working drawing.
The team attempts to generate asymmetrical structures that strive for freedom from the constrained formalism of a given style. They create "open-planned, open-minded, open-ended" designs, made up of complex, undefined spaces.
Although one of the only 1960s firms to retain the original driving vision with which they started, the team has discarded its original aesthetic. They continue to produce increasingly experimental architecture.
Josef Hoffmann
(b. Pirnitz, Moravia 1870; d. Vienna, Austria 1956)
Josef Hoffman was born in Pirnitz, Moravia (now Chechoslovakia) in 1870. He studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Carl von Hasenauer and Otto Wagner, whose theories of a functional, modern architecture profoundly effected his architectural works. He won the Rome prize in 1895 and the following year joined the Wagner's office.
Hoffman established his own office in 1898 and taught at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule from 1899 until 1936. He was a founding member of the Vienna Secession, a group of revolutionary artists and architects. He actively supported the group by designing its exhibitions and writing for the magazine Ver Sacrum. In 1903 he helped found the Wiener Werkstate.
Although Hoffman's earliest works belong to a Secessionist tangent of the Art Nouveau, his later works introduced a vocabulary of regular grids and squares. The functional clarity and abstract purity of his later works mark him as an important precursor of the Modern Movement.
A highly individualistic architect and designer, Hoffman's work combined the simplicity of craft production with a refined aesthetic ornament. He died in Vienna in 1956.
Hans Hollein
(b. Vienna, Austria 1934)
Hans Hollein was born in Vienna in 1934. He studied at the Academy of Graphic Arts in Vienna, the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley where he received his Masters in Architecture. After working in several architecture offices in Australia, South America, Sweden and Germany he returned to Vienna and established a private practice in 1964.
Hollein derived an architectural vocabulary based on an intimate knowledge of the Vienna's culture. Although his studies in America affected his development, Hollein's work relied heavily on Viennese historicism and the Secession movement.
In the early 1960s, Hollein actively criticized Functionalism through speeches, writings, drawings and projects. He used the theory that "everything is architecture" as a means of discounting the strict formalism of Functionalism. Ironically, Hollein's work often appears as a form of Super-Functionalism despite his overt criticism of the functional style.
Since the Baroque era, possibly because of the Hapsburg's firm suppression of literature, the ambivalence of music or architecture have been used for narrative tales. Assembly, collage, and the alteration of old meanings through new relationships are cultivated in media other than just language. Hans
Raymond Hood
(b. Rhode Island 1881; d. 1934)
Raymond Hood was born in Rhode Island in 1881. He studied at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After working for the firm of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson in Boston, he left to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He travelled extensively between Europe and America before establishing a practice in New York in 1914.
Hood did not receive his first major commission (with John Howells) until eight years later when he designed The Chicago Tribune tower, a building with Gothic Revival detailing. Many commissions followed, each one moving further away from a Gothic vocabulary until his works had attained a simple geometric monumentality. His later buildings predict the Miesian tower blocks of the 1950s and 1960s.
Hood died in 1934.
Michael Hopkins
(b. 1935) Michael Hopkins of Michael Hopkins and Partners designs his projects to respond to specific opportunities and constraints within each site. He claims he cannot proceed 'without a client, a brief and a site'. Although a functionalist, Hopkins rarely creates purely functional architecture. Instead, he blends practical considerations with a series of High Tech rules and aesthetic priorities to create an innovative architecture.
Hopkins thinks of buildings as industrial products. He wants his buildings to express the idea if not the reality of pre-fabrication and repetition. He uses High-Tech materials as much for the image they project as for their inherent cheapness, lightness, and durability.
Hopkin's enthusiasm for technology occurred relatively late in his career, after his wife, Patty, explored the architectural possibilities of a systematic building technology. Although this initially generated a severe form of architecture, he gradually integrated more expression into his designs. His later use of tensile structures added an unexpectedly flamboyant element to his designs.
Although Hopkins sees architecture as an abstract discipline based more in intellect than sensibility, he feels that architecture should serve society.
Davies, Colin. Hopkins' rules. The Architectural Review v175 p 54-7. May 1984.
Michael Hopkins & Partners27 Broadley TerraceLondon NW1 6LGEnglandvox +44 020 7724 1751fax +44 020 7723 0932email: hopkins@dial.pipex.com
Michael Hopkins and Partners was formed in 1976 and has five partners: Sir Michael Hopkins, Patty Hopkins, John Pringle, Ian Sharratt and Bill Taylor. The practice works from an office in Marylebone, designed and built by the firm in 1984, and comprises a total of sixty persons.
Details
Michael and Patty Hopkins received the 1994 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture.
Victor Horta
(b. Ghent, Belgium 1861; d. Brussels, Belgium 1947)
Victor Horta was born in Ghent, Belgium in 1861. After studying drawing, textiles and architecture at the Ghent Academie des Beaux Arts, he worked in Paris. He returned to Belgium and worked for the classical architect Alphons Balat, before he started his own practice.
Victor Horta created buildings which rejected historical styles and marked the beginning of modern architecture. He conceived modern architecture as an abstract principle derived from relations to the environment, rather than on the imitation of forms. Although the organic forms of Art Nouveau architecture as established by Horta do not meet our standard ideas of modern architecture, Horta generated ideas which became predecessors to the ideas of many modernist.
Horta was a leading Belgium Art Nouveau architect until Art Nouveau lost public favor. At this time he easily assumed the role of a neoclassical designer. Although many of Horta's buildings have been needlessly destroyed, his former assistant Jean Delhaye has worked to preserve what remains of his work. Delhaye has also secured the Horta residence as a permanent museum.
Horta died in Brussels in 1947.
Ictinus
Ictinus was an ancient Greek architect, active in Athens during the rule of Pericles, circa -440. Ictinus is associated with Greek contemporaries Callicrates and Phidias, who are also credited in the creation of the Parthenon.
(Ictinus is also spelled Iktinos. Callicrates is also spelled Kallikrates.)
Imhotep
(2635-2595 B.C.)
Imhotep existed as a mythological figure in the minds of most scholars until the end of the nineteenth century when he was established as a real historical personage. Revered as a god, a patron of scribes, a sage, and leader, Imhotep is often considered the first true architect.
Although Imhotep has been credited with innumerable architectural achievements, the only certainty is that he built the complex of King Neterikhet at Saqqara. His name inscribed on the north side of the enclosure wall of Sekhemkhet's unfinished pyramid suggest that he was also responsible for this later project.
Imhotep is comsidered to be the earliest known named architect.
Arata Isozaki
(b. Oita, Kyushu, Japan 1931)
Arata Isozaki was born in Oita, Kyushu, Japan in 1931. He studied under Kenso Tange at the University of Tokyo before becoming a member of Tange's design team. In 1963 he established his own practice.
His work in the late 1960s was influenced by the Metabolism school, but mannerism is discernable in the exaggerated expression of the structural members. The joint Core System that he developed in 1960 was essential to the Metabolism movement and was influential to Tange, his former teacher.
His later works are Mannered and self-conscious, borrowing from a spectrum of architectural influences. He appropriates design ideas from such diverse sources as the Vienna Secession, Marcel Cuchamp and Archigram.
Considered Tange's successor as the leading creative figure in Japanese architecture, Isozaki is equally important as a writer and theorist. He consistently acts as the leading interpreter of outside trends and movements for other Japanese designers.
Arne Jacobsen
(b. Copenhagen, Denmark 1902; d. Copenhagen, Denmark 1971)
Arne Jacobsen was born in Copenhagen in 1902. He graduated from the Academy of Arts, Copenhagen in 1928 and ran a private practice from 1930 until his death in 1971. His works reflected a form of "critical regionalism" in which traditional techniques collide with functionalist beliefs. This grafting of ideas generated a personal aesthetic which he used to establish a suitability of scale, detail and program for each project.
Jacobsen was interested in the idea of "total design", designing furniture and fittings for the majority of his projects. For his projects Jacobsen depended on attention to detail, appropriateness of material, and the melding of traditional and functional techniques to generate concept and form.
In later works Jacobsen utilized a degree of sensitive detailing that generated the more rigorous formalism of the third-generation International School. Due to his careful attention to detail his interiors were light and delicate with an ascetic but never sterile style.
Jacobsen introduced modern architecture to Denmark. In doing so he strengthened an internationalist aesthetic but through his sensitive efforts to meld modern functionalism with Danish traditionalism he helped create a modern style that was both Danish and Contemporary.
Hugh Newell Jacobsen
(b. Grand Rapids, Michigan 1929)
Hugh Jacobsen was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1929. Educated at the University of Maryland, he received a BA in 1951. He received a Dip.A.A. from the Architectural Association School in London in 1954 and a B.Arch from Yale University in 1955. He worked as an architect/draftsman in the office of Philip Johnson in Connecticut in 1955. He then worked for Keyes, Lethbridge and Condon in Washington D.C. from 1957 to 1958 He has been in private practice in Washington D.C. since 1958.
Jacobsen is concerned primarily with the sensory aspects of design. He talks about buildings in terms of how they will be experienced both visually and spatially. Although he adheres to few consistent mannerisms he regularly uses certain shapes and details including pavilion arrangements, pyramid and prism shapes, flat arches, and staggered plans. His designs are carefully attuned to their practical requirements. Jacobsen is more a client's than an architect's architect.
Jacobsen has also emerged as one of the few American Architects capable of sensitive restorations. His restorations stand as examples of how to integrate contemporary service technologies with existing forms. His taste in architecture is catholic - "there are no bad
Hugh Newell Jacobsen
(b. Grand Rapids, Michigan 1929)
Hugh Jacobsen was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1929. Educated at the University of Maryland, he received a BA in 1951. He received a Dip.A.A. from the Architectural Association School in London in 1954 and a B.Arch from Yale University in 1955. He worked as an architect/draftsman in the office of Philip Johnson in Connecticut in 1955. He then worked for Keyes, Lethbridge and Condon in Washington D.C. from 1957 to 1958 He has been in private practice in Washington D.C. since 1958.
Jacobsen is concerned primarily with the sensory aspects of design. He talks about buildings in terms of how they will be experienced both visually and spatially. Although he adheres to few consistent mannerisms he regularly uses certain shapes and details including pavilion arrangements, pyramid and prism shapes, flat arches, and staggered plans. His designs are carefully attuned to their practical requirements. Jacobsen is more a client's than an architect's architect.
Jacobsen has also emerged as one of the few American Architects capable of sensitive restorations. His restorations stand as examples of how to integrate contemporary service technologies with existing forms. His taste in architecture is catholic - "there are no bad
Thomas Jefferson
(b. Shadwell, Virginia 1743; d. Monticello, Virginia 1826) Third president of the United States of America
Thomas Jefferson was born in Shadwell, Virginia in 1743. He attended the college of William and Mary, but received no formal architectural training. Essentially self-taught, he assembled an impressive library of art and architecture which included several copies of Palladio's Quattro Libri.
Over time Jefferson acquired an intense appreciation of Palladio's architectural theories based on their connection to ancient Rome. Recognizing the powerful political connotations inherent in ancient Roman structures Jefferson designed many of his civic buildings in a neo-Roman style.
While acting as Minister to France from 1784-89 Jefferson studied the architectural heritage of France, gaining insight from architectural historians and site visits. From the mid 1770s he employed and worked with his distinguished contemporary Benjamin H. Latrobe on the Capitol design.
Jefferson died in Monticello, Virginia in 1826.
John M. Johansen
(b. New York, N.Y. 1916)
John MacLane Johansen was born in New York city in 1916. In 1942 he graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a Masters in Architecture. He worked as a draftsman for Marcel Breuer and as a researcher for the National Housing Agency in Washington, D.C. before he joined Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill in New York. In 1948 he established his own practice in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Johansen's designs emphasize function over form. He focuses on social, urban, and anthropological conditions when designing his buildings. He always considers how to make a human but innovative project. No matter how large the given program, he strives to avoid creating overpowering megastructures.
Generally, Johansen achieves humanity in his buildings through a cooperative design effort . This results in a building that is alive with associations and suggestion. The cooperative process also insures that only a few responsibilities and obligations are lost in the formation process.
Philip Johnson
(b. Cleveland, Ohio, July 8, 1906; d. New Canaan, Connecticut, January 25, 2005)
Philip Johnson was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1906. He received an A. B. in architectural history from Harvard University in 1930 and upon graduation became the Director of the Department of Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In 1932 he co-directed the Modern Architecture exhibition at MOMA which introduced European modern architecture to a wide American audience. Building on the MOMA show, Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock codified the principles of modern architecture in the book The International Style: Architecture since 1922 . During the 1930s, Johnson used his personal wealth to champion the cause of many modern architects most notably Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
In 1940 Johnson returned to Harvard's Graduate School of Design where he trained under Marcel Breuer. He received a B.Arch in 1943 and practised architecture in Cambridge, Massachusetts until 1946, when he moved back to New York to serve as Director of Architecture at MOMA. He worked with Richard Foster from 1964 to 1967 and with John Burgee from 1967 until his retirement. He became a trustee of MOMA in 1958, received the AIA Gold Medal in 1978, and received the Pritzker Architecture prize in 1979.
As an architect, Johnson is most widely respected for his work in the early 1950s while still under the influence of Mies Van Der Rohe. However, he altered his architectural principles from Modernist to Post-Modernist to anti-Post Modernist at will. This has led to the criticism that he showed more interest in style than in substance. He will probably be remembered more as a stimulator of ideas than as a designer.
Johnson/Burgee
(Johnson b. 1906; d. 2005) A twenty year architectural partnership led by Philip Johnson and John Burgee, founded 1967.
"It was this partnership that transformed Mr. Johnson from a scholar-architect designing small to medium-size institutional buildings for well-to-do clients into a major force in commercial architecture. Mr. Burgee's arrival coincided with the firm's movement toward a number of major, widely acclaimed skyscraper projects, including the IDS Center in Minneapolis and Pennzoil Place in Houston. Mr. Johnson's leanings were always toward the aesthetic issues in design, and in Mr. Burgee he had a partner who could serve not only as a colleague in design but also as an executive overseeing the kind of large architectural office required to produce major skyscrapers.
"As if to mark Mr. Burgee's role, the Johnson-Burgee firm moved in 1986 into the elliptical skyscraper at 885 Third Avenue, between 53rd and 54th Streets. Popularly known as the Lipstick Building, it had been designed by the partners together. But the partnership was not to last long beyond the move: Mr. Burgee, eager to occupy center stage, negotiated a more limited role for Mr. Johnson and in 1991 exercised the prerogative he had as the firm's chief executive and eased Mr. Johnson out altogether.
"It proved an unwise decision: the firm, crippled by an arbitration decision unrelated to Mr. Johnson, soon went into bankruptcy, all but ending Mr. Burgee's career. Mr. Johnson, who had severed ties to his former firm, had no liability and went on to rent a smaller space in the Lipstick Building, gleefully hanging out his shingle in his mid-80's and declaring himself in business as a solo practitioner. Before long, he had several commissions, including a cathedral in Dallas, and his career had recharged itself."
— Paul Goldberger, "Philip Johnson Is Dead at 98; Architecture's Restless Intellect", New York Times, 2005.0127.
Fay Jones
(b. 1921; d. August 31, 2004)
E. Fay Jones was born in 1921. He studied at the University of Arkanasas in Fayetteville and at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He also apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright before establishing a private practice in Arkansas.
An unassuming architect, E. Fay Jones has worked quietly in the isolation of the Ozark Mountains for most of his career. Ignoring architectural trends, Jones has continued to refine the vocabulary of regional forms and materials that he learned as a student with the Taliesin Fellowship. Using Wrightean principles, tailored to his own aesthetics, Jones has created buildings that Wright might have proudly claimed.
Jones shows a marked ability to translate fanciful sketches into built form. While many designers envision a structural framework clad with an outer skin of enclosing materials, Jones has actually created the vision. His two most renowned buildings - Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and the Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel in Bella Vista, Arkansas exhibit a transcendental flair for the sculptural and the simple. Both are graceful, wooden, outdoor structures.
Details
Recipient of the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, 1990.
Full name: Euine Fay Jones
Inigo Jones
(b. London, England 1573; d. London, England 1652)
Inigo Jones was born in London in 1573. He received no formal training but he was able to journey abroad where he gained insight and knowledge of architecture. A royal protege, he was appointed Surveyor to Henry, Prince of Wales in 1610. In 1613 he was appointed Surveyor of the King's Works. This coincided with Jones' second Italian journey during which he visited northern Italy and studied Palladio's villas. The notes in Jones' copy of the 1570 edition of Palladio's Quattro Libri show his growing mastery of the theory and grammar of classical architecture.
On Jones' return to London he was given the post of Surveyor-General to the Office of Works. Under this title he became involved with a number of large scale houses, churches, and palaces for King James I. Between 1625 -1640 Jones was concerned principally with work on two major London sites: the repair and remodel of St. Paul's Cathedral, and the design of Covent Garden.
Although Jones' work often lack originality, he was an important figure in architecture because he was the first person to introduce the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaisance to Gothic England.
Albert Kahn
(b. Rhaunen, Germany 1869; d. New York, N.Y. 1942)
Albert Kahn was born in Rhaunen, Germany in 1869. In 1884, four years after emigrating to the U.S. Kahn joined the architectural firm of Mason & Rise. Eventually, he became the firm's principal architect and chief designer. In 1891, during his tenure with Mason & Rise, he visited Europe on a scholarship award. In 1896 Kahn established a partnership with George Nettleton and Alexander Trowbridge which dissolved in 1900. In 1902 Kahn established his own practice.
Although his early work was unassuming, Kahn achieved a breakthrough in 1906 with his single storey, top-lit modular design for the George N. Pierce Plant in Buffalo, New York. Designed to uniform lighting and physical flexibility, it rapidly became the prototype for American factory design, particularly in the emerging motor industry.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Kahn was not inclined to "romanticize the machine". Extensions of user needs, his designs provided efficient and practical solutions to a growing industrial environment. By the late 1930s Kahn employed over 600 people and was responsible for nearly a fifth of the industrial buildings within the U.S.
Louis I. Kahn
(b. Saarama (Saaremaa), Estonia 1901; d. New York, N.Y. 1974)
Louis Kahn was born in Saarama (Saaremaa), Estonia in 1901. His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1905. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a thorough grounding the the Beaux Art school of architecture. During the 1920s and 1930s he worked as a draughtsman and, later, as a head designer for several Philadelphia-based firms.
In 1925-26 Kahn acted as the Chief of Design for the Sesquincettennial Exhibition. During the Depression, he was active in the design of public assisted housing. Beginning in 1935 Kahn worked with a series of partners, but from 1948 until his death in 1974, Kahn worked alone. From 1947 to 1957 he was Design Critic and Professor of Architecture at Yale University, after which he was Dean at the University of Pennsylvania.
Kahn's architecture is notable for its simple, platonic forms and compositions. Through the use of brick and poured-in place concrete masonry, he developed a contemporary and monumental architecture that maintained a sympathy for the site. While rooted in the International Style, Kahn's architecture was an amalgam of his Beaux Arts education and a personal aesthetic impulse to develop his own architectural forms.
Considered one of the foremost architects of the late twentieth century, Kahn received the AIA Gold Medal in 1971 and the RIBA Gold Medal in 1972. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1971.
Michael de Klerk
(b. Amsterdam, Netherlands 1884; d. Amsterdam 1934)
Michael de Klerk was born in Amsterdam in 1884. He trained as an architect in the office of Eduard Cuypers from 1898 to 1910. From 1913 to 1923 he was involved with the "expressionistic" Amsterdam School. Although he resolutely refused to act as leader of the School, his contemporaries acknowledged his pre-eminent position.
Like most Dutch architects of his time he was influenced by H.P. Berlage. In addition, he had a personal interest in the the English Arts & Crafts Movement. Reflecting influences of both the Amsterdam School and the "Arts & Crafts" movement, De Klerk's architecture contained impressionistic elements and artistic craftsmanship of the highest order.
De Klerk died in Amsterdam in 1939.
Knut Knutsen
(b. Oslo, Norway 1903; d. 1969)
Knut Knutsen was born in Oslo, Norway in 1903. He was educated at the State School of Arts and Crafts in Oslo from 1920-25. In 1933 he established a private practice in Oslo.
Knutsoen believed that buildings should be used to publicize their owners. He thought that mankind was what mattered. He also felt that "nature is the most valuable and greatest source of inspiration." He felt we must preserve nature by seeking harmony with it and making our buildings subservient to it.
Knutsen opposed of the style-based architecture of the Modern Movement. His believed that buildings could express express "freedom, poetry and harmony with nature". Knutson felt a building should be invisible and that it should fit with the existing environment.
Although Knutsen's pre-war buildings stuck to convention, his later works show less constraint and demonstrate his newly refined theories. Knutsen's later houses involve the theme of disintegration into elements and the use of rustic materials.
Knutsen's influence on the post-war generation was considerable. His work generated constructive ideas without resorting to nationalistic or romantic precedents. His ideas have influenced several outstanding Norwegian architects who are now teachers.
Pierre Koenig
(b. San Francisco, California 1925; d. Los Angeles, California, April 4, 2004)
Pierre Koenig was born in San Francisco, California in 1925. He studied at the University of Utah, School of Engineering in Salt Lake City, at the Pasadena City College and at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where he received his Bachelors of Architecture. In 1950, he built his own small steel-frame house, as a kind of proof of principle. In 1952, after short stints with Raphael Soriano in Hollywood and Kistner, Wright and Wright in Los Angeles, he established a private practice in Los Angeles.
Koenig used steel frame structures and industrial technology to generate his own architectural style. He believed that truth in architecture lies in the natural expression of materials without ornamentation. He approached architecture in terms of simplicity based on economy in terms of money spent and energy consumed. He used passive cooling and solar heating techniques to create energy efficient buildings.
Koenig's houses became prototypes for his large-scale projects. He believed that floor plans could be evolved from the structural plan, and that the simple multiplication of standard structural parts can produce almost unlimited variations. He used steel in his buildings as much for aesthetic reasons as to maintain the economy of mass production that he envisioned from standard structural parts.
Arup Associates
(Arup b. Newcastle upon Tyne 1895; d. 1988)(Established 1963)
Sir Ove Arup was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1895. Generally considered the foremost engineer of his era, he created the firm Arup and Partners in 1946 as a team of structural consultants. The complex level of design considerations that the partnership encountered led to the creation of Arup Associates in 1963.
Arup Associates originally developed as a partnership between engineer Ove Arup and architect Philip Downson. It existed as a multi-disciplinary office that provided architectural, surveying, and engineering services. The firm's overall success was mainly due to Ove Arup, who believed in practical architecture, in which design fulfills social and public needs.
With Arup Associates and, later, with such research and design groups as the Modern Architecture Research Group (MARS) and the Tecton Group, Arup successfully broke the narrow confines of architecture as a single profession by creating a core organization of several specialties.
Arup died in London in 1988.
Rem Koolhaas
(b. Netherlands circa 1944)
"Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)"
"In Europe, Koolhaas has completed a number of projects that have won high praise from critics, including a residence in Bordeaux, France; the Educatorium, a multifunction building for Utrecht University in the Netherlands; and the master plan and Grand Palais for Lille, France which is his largest realized urban planning project."
— Rem Koolhaas Wins Pritzker Prize 2000, ArchitectureWeek, June 7, 2000 (includes project photos)
A Dutch graduate of the AA School in London, Rem Koolhas is both a rhetorical architect and a creator of real physical buildings. He has been considered a noted Deconstructivist at least since the major MOMA exhibition in New York during 1987 or 1988, although Koolhaas tends perhaps toward the more humanist, less absolute branch of the Deconstructivist school.
— Great Buildings Online
Mr. Koolhaas believes in the idea of social progress. The pace of global change leaves him unfazed and optimistic. His work eagerly reforges the broken link between technology and progress. He revels in the unexpected rather than passively anticipating agony. Perhaps as a Dutchman, imprinted with his country's role as an international trading center, he has fewer problems with global change than might someone of another nationality. The Dutch, a nation of traders, have not surprisingly spawned an architect whose work responds to the silent, nanosecond transnational flows of money and ideas.
Mr. Koolhaas also notes the Dutch pride in the national trait of economy and thrift. He actually likes "the integration of the notion of cheapness to create sublime conditions" and is philosophical about "the client as chaos." "Chaos simply happens. You cannot aspire to chaos; you can only be an instrument of it."
— from "Rem Koolhaas, Post-Nationalist Architect", The New York Times, September 11, 1994.
Creator's Words
"Architects, for the first time in several decades, are being solicited for their power to physically articulate new visions," says Mr. Koolhaas, in person charming, unassuming, hyperarticulate. "Once again one feels a belief in the propagandistic nature of architecture."
— Rem Koolhaas, quoted in "Rem Koolhaas, Post-Nationalist Architect", The New York Times, September 11, 1994.
Details
Recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, 2000 (to be formally awarded May 29, 2000).
Kisho Kurokawa
(b. Aichi Prefecture, Japan 1934)
Kisho Kurokawa was born in Aichi Prefecture, Japan in 1934. He graduated from Kyoto University in 1957 and then studied at the Graduate School of Tokyo University under Kenzo Tange.
Early within his career Kurokawa rejected orthodox Modernism and a Western obsession with mechanical analogy. In the 1960s he founded a Japanese avant-garde movement known as the Metabolists to combat this Western Modernism and to propagate a philosophy of radical change. Despite the group's initial success at Expo 70 in Osaka, the group disbanded.
Many of Kurokawa's buildings explore the notion of engawa, the "in between space" where public realm and private space co-exist in harmony. His recent architecture has achieved considerable international acclaim and has secured a series of prestigious commissions. He abhors traditionalism, but feels that the respective cultures of different countries offer the most appropriate response to contemporary malaise.
Henri Labrouste
(b. Paris, France 1801; d. Paris, 1875)
Pierre Francois Henri Labrouste was born in Paris in 1801. He enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1819 under Vaudoyer and Levas, and won the Grand Prix in 1924. From 1824 to 1830 he studied at the French Academy in Rome, where he developed his ideas on "romantic rationalism". He fell out with the Beaux Arts over his 1828 restoration study of the ancient Greek temples at Paestum.
Labrouste believed that architecture should reflect society. Accordingly, his work reflects the rationalism and technical aspects of industrial society. His work also embodies the ideals of writer Victor Hugo, who believed that architecture is a form of communication, like literature, and that in "organic phases" of construction it expressed a coherent body of social belief.
Phyllis Lambert
Although Phyllis Lambert initially studied at Vassar, she did not seriously consider architecture as a career until 1954 when she became involved with the Seagram Building, a New York skyscraper that her father planned to build. Involving herself with the project on force of opinion alone, she eventually convinced her father to hire Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Her father agreed to hire Mies van der Rohe on the condition that Lambert act as Director of Planning.
After working on the Seagram's Tower, Lambert returned to school to study architecture. With Mies as her mentor, she completed school and entered into practice. Although her first projects mimicked conventional Miesian design principles, her subsequent ventures showed little formal debt to Mies.
Shortly after her father's death in 1971, Lambert returned to Vancouver where she rediscovered a love for the city's graystone buildings. Appalled by the demolition of historic structures within the city, she became a vocal leader of citizen-activist groups, an organizer of housing cooperatives to save low-income neighborhoods, and a lobbyist.
Lambert is active in the International Confederation of Architectural Museums, Chairman of the Board of Columbia University's Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, an advisor to the National Gallery of Canada, and a consultant to many other institutions. Although she has acted more as an architectural activist than as a practicing architect in her later years, she has been a great catalyst to modern architecture.
For 20 years, from the late 1970s to her intended departure in March 1999, Lambert headed the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, building it into a significant national cultural institution.
Benjamin Henry Latrobe
(b. Leeds, Yorks, England 1764; d. New Orleans, Louisiana 1820)
Benjamin Latrobe was born the son of a Moravian minister in Leeds, Yorks, England in 1764. In 1776 he left England to study at the Moravian Pedagogium in German Silesia. Initially interested in engineering, he developed an interest in architecture while travelling through Germany, France and Italy. Once back in England, he worked as an engineer for John Smeaton and then as an architect for S.P. Cockerell.
The fashion for Greek Revivalism had already begun when Latrobe emigrated to America in 1796. In 1798 Latrobe travelled to Philadelphia where he quickly established himself as a talented architect of Greek Revival buildings.
The architectural style in which he specialized fit nicely with Thomas Jefferson's philosophy of politically relevant architecture and made him quite popular with the president. In 1803 he was summoned to Washington to complete the U.S. Capitol, a project which preoccupied him for the rest of his life.
Latrobe was the first fully trained architect to work and teach in America. His pupils continued working in the Greek Revival style throughout the 1820s and 1830s.
Latrobe died in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1820.
See also Thornton-Latrobe-Bulfinch.
Luciano Laurana
(b. La Vrana, Zara, Italy circa 1420; d. Pesaro, Italy 1479)
Chief architect and engineer for the palace in Urbino, by appointment from Frederico III, Count of Montefeltro and first Duke of Urbino.
John Lautner
(b. Marquette, Michigan 1911; d. 1994)
John Lautner was born in Marquette, Michigan in 1911. Lautner received his bachelor of science degree from Northern Michigan University and later apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin and Arizona.
Lautner generates designs that owe a great deal to his six year fellowship at Taliesin. He creates daring and innovative spaces that fit each design situation and which meet each client's individual requirements. He attempts to improve life with spaces that meet all basic human needs for emotional, psychological and physical shelter.
Utilizing visually intriguing and functionally ingenious spaces, Lautner creates houses with vast clear span interiors. He integrates water and the surrounding landscape into his overall design. He boldly experiments with new industrial processes and materials in his continual search to meet total human needs. He considers concrete the most desirable material for his needs, because it allows for an infinite variety of spaces.
Claude Nicholas Ledoux
(b. Dormans, France 1736; d. Paris, France 1806)
Claude Ledoux was born in Dormans, France in 1736. He was educated at a private architectural school in Paris.. Established by J. F. Blondel, the school emphasized native Baroque tradition but exposed students to English architecture. After completing his studies, Ledoux assumed several goverment positions as an engineer, mainly of bridge design.
Ledoux' dramatic style owes much to the fact that he never visited Rome. His concepts of Roman architecture were accordingly warped by the engravings of Piranesi from which he derived his knowledge. He did visit England, where he was influenced by the Palladian tradition with which he was already familiar.
Although much of Ledoux's architecture is quite practical and functional, the "visionary" aspects of his work are better known. His designs became symbols of the ancien regime and their exaggerated use of classical elements seems to anticipate post-modern classicism.
Ricardo Legorreta
(b. Mexico City, Mexico 1931)
Ricardo Legorreta was born in Mexico City in 1931. He graduated in 1953 from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico with a degree in architecture. While in school Legorreta worked as a draftsman. After graduating. Legorreta worked for Jose Villagran Garcia in Mexico City, becoming a partner in 1955. In 1960 Legorreta established his own practice and in 1964 he became the principal of Legorreta Arquitectos, Mexico City. Since 1977 he has been president of Legorreta Arquitectos Dienos, furniture and accessory design.
The international style of architecture thrived in post war Mexico. Ignoring the traditional native architecture based on thick wall systems, the buildings of this era incorporated the the column aesthetic. Legorreta brought back the "wall culture" of Mexico. Emphasizing the supremacy of solids over voids, the use of color to enclose wall space, and the South American preference for privacy, Legorreta designed regional architecture that avoided the set design techniques prevalent in many parts of Mexico and Southern California.
Legorreta has designed a diverse group of buildings. Although different in scale they all achieve a supreme blending of space, light and color. Legorreta's architecture has been consistently good, and it has evolved because he has never regarded architecture from the perspective of a businessman. Although he achieves what he does through extremely hard work, he has always remained a dedicated artist.
Howe and Lescaze
George Howe was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1886. He attended Harvard from 1904-7 and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1908-12. He started his Philadelphia practice in 1916 and produced a wide spectrum of eclectic designs.
William Lescaze was born in Geneva in 1896. He was educated in Geneva and graduated from the ETH in 1919. In 1920 he emigrated to the U.S. working in Cleveland and New York before hooking up with Howe.
The partnership of Howe & Lescaze was established in 1929 and lasted until 1934. Responsibility within the office was divided. Howe generated the concepts and provided direction on the projects, while Lescaze worked on detailing and design.
Instrumental in introducing the International Style to the U.S., the firm completed the first truly modern skyscraper, the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building in Philadelphia in 1932. This building demonstrated for the first time the tenets of International Modernism, applied to both exterior and interior detailing of a building.
Howe died in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1955. Lescaze, who also helped introduce the Modern Movement to England, died in New York in 1969.
Pierre Lescot
(b. circa 1510; d. 1578)
An early architect to apply pure classical orders in France, and architect for a new wing of the Louvre, defining it's subsequent development after his death, and under a series of French rulers.
Sigurd Lewerentz
(b. Bjarta, Sweden 1885; d. Lund, Sweden 1975)
Lewerentz was an important early modernist in Sweden who collaborated with Erik Gunnar Asplund, together winning the Woodland Cemetery competition in 1914. The Chapel of the Resurrection at Woodland by Lewerentz is considered perhaps his greatest work.
In the 1940s and 1950s Lewerentz worked in door and window production, and then again designed admired buildings in the 1950s and 1960s.
Lewerentz died in Lund, Sweden in 1975.
Daniel Libeskind
(b. Poland, 1946)
Daniel Libeskind is a contemporary deconstructivist architect who has taught at several university architecture schools.
"Ever since I began architecture, I had an abhorrence to conventional architecture offices. There was something about the atmosphere of redundancy, routine and production that made me allergic to all forms of specialization and so-called professionalism. Ten years ago we founded our office in Berlin as a result of a decision, an accident, a rumor on the street and began an unimaginable journey down a path on which we are still travelling."
— Daniel Libeskind. Daniel Libeskind : The Space of Encounter.
Maya Lin
(b. Athens, Ohio Oct. 10, 1959)
A contemporary Chinese-American woman architectural artist, who at age 21 designed the originally controversial but now much admired Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
"I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode. Interest in the land and concern about how we are polluting the air and water of the planet are what make me want to travel back in geologic time-to witness the shaping of the earth before man."
— Maya Lin, quoted in Smithsonian Magazine, August 1996
"The Vietnam memorial is a place where something happens within the viewer. It's like reading a book. I purposely had the names etched ragged right on each panel to look like a page from a book," Lin said.
"I also wanted remembering the past relevant to the present. Some people wanted me to put the names in alphabetical order. I wanted them in chronological order so that a veteran could find his time within the panel. It's like a thread of life."
— Maya Lin, quoted in the UC Berkeley Berkeleyan, March 15, 1995
education: BA, Architecture, Yale College, 1981.Master's of Architecture from Yale, 1986. Honorary doctorates from Yale, Williams and Smith.
Jakob Prandtauer & Gotthard Linz
(b. Landeck, Austria 1658; d. 1726)
Jacob Prandtauer was born in Stanz, Austria in 1658. One of the great architects of the Austrian baroque, he studied masonry and architecture under Hans Gerog Asam. By 1680 Prandtauer had made contact with the Carlones, an Italian family of masons and sculptors who influenced his architecture with their use of frescoes and stuccoed vaults.
After studying the work of Andreas Faistenberger in Munich, Prandtauer worked as a sculptor on the Duke of Courland's Castle in Thalheim. While working in Thalheim, he extended a terrace garden and designed a new pavilion. He quickly received several commissions for sculptures and other architectural features.
Although his mastery of traditional craftsmanship initially made Prandtauer skeptical of the baroque style, he eventually created a synthesis between local, traditional design and the evolving baroque style. Although Prandtauer never intended to create a style or make an architectural statement, he influenced the direction of architecture until the mid-eighteenth century.
In the last twenty years of his career, Prandtauer helped rebuild and restore numerous religious buildings. Although he worked with a spectrum of styles, he successfully melded local tradition with the influences of Roman Italian, northern Italian, and German to create a new baroque style. His flexibility in different situations, exhibited his freedom from stylistic dogma.
Prandtauer died in 1726.
Adolf Loos
(b. Brunn, Czechoslovakia 1870; d. 1933)
Adolf Loos was born in Brunn, Czechoslovakia in 1870. His studies at the Royal and Imperial State Technical College in Rechenberg, Bohemia were cut short by a two year stint in the army. After he attended the College of Technology in Dresden for three years, he worked in the U.S. as a mason, a floor-layer and a dish-washer. He eventually obtained a job with the architect Carl Mayreder and in 1897 he established his own practice. He taught for several years throughout Europe, but returned to practice in Vienna in 1928.
Adolf Loos gained greater notoriety for his writings than for his buildings. Loos wanted an intelligently established building method supported by reason. He believed that everything that could not be justified on rational grounds was superfluous and should be eliminated. Loos recommended pure forms for economy and effectiveness. He rarely considered how this "effectiveness" could correspond to rational human needs.
Loos argued against decoration by pointing to economic and historical reasons for its development, and by describing the suppression of decoration as necessary to the regulation of passion. He believed that culture resulted from the renunciation of passions and that which brings man to the absence of ornamentation generates spiritual power.
Loos attacked contemporary design as well as the imitative styling of the nineteenth century. He looked on contemporary decoration as mass-produced, mass-consumed trash. Loos acted as a model and a seer for architects of the 1920s. His fight for freedom from the decorative styles of the nineteenth century led a campaign for future architects.
Berthold Lubetkin
(b. Georgia, Russia 1901; d. 1990)
Berthold Lubetkin was born in Tiflis, Georgia, Russia in 1901. He studied in Russia, Berlin, and Warsaw before settling in Paris where he attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts. In Paris he observed the early experiments of Le Corbusier and mastered the use of reinforced concrete. He established a practice with Jean Ginsberg for a short time before moving to England in 1930. In 1932 he helped establish the Tecton Group and was actively involved with both MARS (Modern Architectural Research Group) and CIAM (International Congress for Modern Architecture).
His major commissions show an adherence to the vocabulary of the International School that was occasionally tempered by more abstract concepts. His designs were often dictated by functional needs.
Edwin Lutyens
(b. London, England 1869; d. London, England 1944)
Edwin Lutyens was born in London in 1869. He became a pupil of Ernest George in 1887 and studied with him until he established his own practice. At the time he established his practice, he met Gertrude Jekyll who eventually collaborated on the landscape portion of many of his commissions. Through her social connections, Jekyll helped Lutyens accumulate many commissions.
Lutyens designed his early houses in the informal manner of the "English Free School". The houses utilized historic references within a local context both in terms of materials and building traditions.
In 1906, Lutyens designed a building for Heathcote near Ilkley that emerged as a fully developed Baroque design and which marked a decisive transition from his earlier works. Although Lutyens had no background in classical Baroque architecture, the building showed an immediate mastery of the classical language of architecture. From this point, Lutyens remained committed to the disciplines of the Orders.
Lutyens was knighted in 1918, received the Gold Medal of the RIBA in 1921 and was made President of the Royal Academy in 1938. He died in London in 1944.
Robert Maillart
(b. Berne, Switzerland 1872; d. 1940)
Robert Maillart was born in Berne, Switzerland in 1872. After he received his civil engineering degree from the Federal Polytechnical Institute in Zurich in 1894, he worked for a series of Swiss engineers. He established his own design-construction firm in 1902. He moved the firm to Russia in 1912 but it collapsed during the Russian Revolution in 1917. Upon his return to Switzerland, Maillart worked with Lucien Meisser and Ernst Stettler as a consulting engineer.
Between 1910 and 1912 Maillart entered five major bridge competitions. Although juries usually preferred the more conventional bridges to his, Maillart actually built three bridges based on the quality and competitive pricing of his works. Immediately following this period, he taught for several years as a private teacher at the Zurich Federal Polytechnical Institute.
Primarily an engineer, Maillart gained notoriety through his innovative bridge designs. Maillart utilized the structural strength and expressive potential of reinforced concrete to generate a modern form for his bridges. To avoid structural beams and arches, he established a structural form based on both flat and curved concrete slabs reinforced with steel.
Using very simple construction concepts, Maillart produced some of the most beautiful structures of the twentieth century. Maillart's major new forms, the open three-hinged, hollow-box arch, the mushroom slab, and the deck-stiffened arch illustrate at least three of the fundamentally radical ideas he expressed about twentieth-century structures.
Benedetto da Maiano
Italian, 1442 to 1497.
Benedetto da Maiano, or Benedetto da Majano, was the younger brother of Giuliano da Maiano and his partner in their Florence studio. Benedetto is credited with designing the first story of the Palazzo Strozzi, although according to some sources, Giuliano da Sangallo was the actual designer of the building.
Michelangelo
(b. Caprese, Italy 1475; d. Rome, Italy 1564)
Painter, sculptor, and architect, Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in Caprese, near Florence, Italy in 1475. He trained as a sculptor and painter before establishing himself as an architect much later in his career. In 1515 he became involved with a series of papal commissions that would continue almost without break until his death.
Although a Renaissance artist, Michelangelo generated sculptural detailing that marked the beginning of the Baroque and the end of purely classical architecture. Michelangelo emphasized visual effect over the structural logic of a design. He always subordinated invention to the needs of overall composition, which to Michelangelo was analogous with the symmetry and articulation of the human body.
Considered one of the key innovators of the sixteenth century and a fountainhead of inspiration for post-Renaissance architects, Michelangelo rejected the restrictions of classical design theory and generated a more imaginative approach to architectural composition.
Michelangelo died in Rome in 1564.
Robert Mills
"Robert Mills was the first professionally trained architect born in America—in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1781. Though Mills was known for numerous official buildings (he was long Architect and Engineer for the government), his greatest triumph was in winning the privately organized competition for the Washington Monument (1836). Mills had earlier designed the Washington Monument in Baltimore (1815-25): a Tuscan column resting on a sturdy base and topped by a figure of the president. His proposal for Washington, D.C., was a 600-foot-high square shaft, barely tapered and almost flat-topped, rising from a huge Greco-Roman peristyle (circular colonnade) wreathed with thirty-two Doric columns plus porch!
"Mills died in 1855."
Rafael Moneo
(b. Navarra, Spain 1937)
Rafael Moneo was born in Navarra, Spain in 1937. He graduated in 1961 from the Escuela de Arquitectura in Madrid after which he worked in the Denmark office of Jorn Utzon for two years. He then worked as an assistant at the Academia de Espana until 1965 when he established a private practice in Madrid.
In his work Moneo divides his professional life into two categories: teaching and architectural practice. In both facets of his career, he decries the modern trend toward short-lived architecture and attempts to emphasize the importance of creating lasting monuments to society.
Unlike many contemporary architects, Moneo does not borrow from the trends associated with European utilitarianism and expressionism. Instead, Moneo produces a softened version of Nordic and Dutch traditions. To this conception he adds an evaluation of his own historic traditions. This range of influences and aims is especially clear in his works of the 1960s. During these years Moneo was one of the centers of interest and excitement in Madrid architecture.
Against a growing trend for ephemeral designs, Moneo works to maintain the competence of architecture. He sees architecture as a vast history in which the architect conscientiously looks for models and resources to transform. Today, as both an architect and as a teacher, Moneo remains one of the most important figures in Spanish architecture.
Pier Luigi Nervi
(b. Sondrio, Lombardy 1891; d. Rome, Italy 1979)
Pier Nervi was born in Sondrio, Lombardy in 1891. He began work as an engineer and contractor in 1923, after training as an engineer at Bologna University. In the 1940s he developed ideas for a reinforced concrete which allowed him to create structures of "strength, simplicity and grace". His services as an engineering consultant were highly sought as a result of his experimentation with structural concrete.
Nervi believed that architecture and engineering were two connected parts of a whole. To produce good buildings, he felt that a knowledge of materials, nature and construction were essential to understanding architecture. His work as a theorist attracted a wide following.
Through his designs, Nervi successfully made reinforced concrete the main structural material of the day. He was awarded Gold Medals by the RIBA, the AIA and the Academi d'Architecture. In the years 1946-61 he was a professor of engineering at Rome University.
Nervi died in Rome in 1979.
Richard Neutra
(b. Vienna 1892; d.Wuppertal, Germany 1970)
Richard Neutra was born in Vienna in 1892. He graduated in 1917 from the Technische Hochschule, Vienna, where he had been taught by Adolf Loos, and was influenced by Otto Wagner. He worked for Erich Mendelsohn in 1921-22 and in 1923 emigrated to the U.S. where he worked on several projects with Rudolf N. Schindler before establishing his own practice.
Neutra created a modern regionalism for Southern California which combined a light metal frame with a stucco finish to create a light effortless appearance. "He specialized in extending architectural space into a carefully arranged landscape. The dramatic images of flat-surfaced, industrialized residential buildings contrasted against nature were popularized by the photography of Julius Shulman."
An experienced and outspoken writer and speaker, Neutra worked with a series of successful partners including his wife, Dione, from 1922, his protege, Robert Alexander, from 1949-58 and his son, Dion, from 1965. He adamantly believed that modern architecture must act as an social force in the betterment of mankind.
Neutra died in Wuppertal, Germany in 1970.
Oscar Niemeyer
(b. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1907)
Oscar Niemeyer was born in Rio de Janeiro Brazil in 1907. He graduated from the Escola Nacional de Belas Artas in Rio de Janeiro in 1934, and in 1935 he joined the office of Lucio Costa. In 1936 he joined the team of Brazilian architects collaborating with Le Corbusier on a new Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro. This proved a formative experience for Niemeyer.
In 1942, Niemeyer created a series of recreational buildings which borrowed extensively from the expressive Brazilian Baroque style of architecture. In 1956 Niemeyer was appointed architectural adviser to Nova Cap - an organization charged with implementing Lucio Costa's plans for Brazil's new capital. The following year, he became its chief architect, designing most of the city's important buildings. The epoch of Niemeyer's career, these buildings mark a period of creativity and modern symbolism.
Niemeyer continued to work on Brazilia until 1964 when his political affiliation with the communist party forced him into exile in France. In the late 1960s he resumed his career in Brazil, teaching at the University of Rio de Janeiro and working in private practice. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architecture in 1970.
Andrea Palladio
(b. Padua, Italy 1508; d. Vicenza, Italy 1580)
Andrea Palladio was born in Padua, Italy in 1508. He worked as an assistant in a Vicenza guild of masons and stone-cutters before he met the amateur architect, Giangiorgio Trissino, who took him under his wing and renamed him Andrea Palladio. After a series of commissions executed in the Classic tradition, Palladio worked with Daniele Barbaro on a new edition of Vitruvius.
His early commissions consisted primarily of palaces and villas for the aristocracy, but he began to design religious buildings in the 1560s. In 1570 he published his theoretical work I Quattro Libri dell 'Architettura.. In the same year, he was appointed architectural adviser to the Venetian Republic.
Although influenced by a number of Renaissance thinkers and architects, Palladio's ideas resulted independently of most contemporary ideas. Creatively linked to the artistic traditions of Alberti and Bramante, Palladio used principles that related to art and forms that related to nature to generate his architecture.
Palladio's architecture and theories embodied Renaissance architectural thought in the second half of the sixteenth century. Although Palladio's works lack some of the grandeur of other Renaissance architects, he established a successful and lasting way of recreating ancient classicism.
Palladio died in Vicenza, Italy in 1580.
John Russell Pope
(b. New York, 1874; d. 1937)
Born in New York in 1874, John Russell Pope studied architecture under William R. Ware at Columbia University. He graduated in 1894, at which time he won two university awards, one to the American Academy in Rome and one for travel. During his two year sojourn through Italy and Greece, Pope made measured drawings of antique edifices.
Late in 1896, Pope went to Paris, where he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He returned to New York in 1900 and established an office. In his practice he designed houses, master plans, and public buildings. With eclectic styling, Pope revived the Gothic, the Georgian, the eighteenth-century French, and the classical styles. Pope displayed particular skill with his classical buildings which possessed clear forms and grand spirit.
Pope was the foremost inheritor of McKim's severe classicism. As a result, he earned the title "the last of the Romans."
Pope died in 1937.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
(b. Aachen, Germany 1886; d. Chicago, Illinois 1969)
Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe was born in Aachen, Germany in 1886. He worked in the family stone-carving business before he joined the office of Bruno Paul in Berlin. He entered the studio of Peter Behrens in 1908 and remained until 1912.
Under Behrens' influence, Mies developed a design approach based on advanced structural techniques and Prussian Classicism. He also developed a sympathy for the aesthetic credos of both Russian Constructivism and the Dutch De Stijl group. He borrowed from the post and lintel construction of Karl Friedrich Schinkel for his designs in steel and glass.
Mies worked with the magazine G which started in July 1923. He made major contributions to the architectural philosophies of the late 1920s and 1930s as artistic director of the Werkbund-sponsored Weissenhof project and as Director of the Bauhaus.
Famous for his dictum 'Less is More', Mies attempted to create contemplative, neutral spaces through an architecture based on material honesty and structural integrity. Over the last twenty years of his life, Mies achieved his vision of a monumental 'skin and bone' architecture. His later works provide a fitting denouement to a life dedicated to the idea of a universal, simplified architecture
Mies died in Chicago, Illinois in 1969.
Eero Saarinen
(b. Kirkkonummi, Finland 1910; d. Ann Arbor, Michigan 1961)
Eero Saarinen was born in Kirkkonummi, Finland in 1910. He studied in Paris and at Yale University, after which he joined his father's practice. Eero initially pursued sculpture as his art of choice. After a year in art school, he decided to become an architect instead. Much of his work shows a relation to sculpture.
Saarinen developed a remarkable range which depended on color, form and materials. Saarinen showed a marked dependence on innovative structures and sculptural forms, but not at the cost of pragmatic considerations. He easily moved back and forth between the International Style and Expressionism, utilizing a vocabulary of curves and cantilevered forms.
Eero Saarinen died in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1961.
Kenzo Tange
(b. Osaka, Japan 1913; d. at age 91 Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, March 22, 2005)
Kenzo Tange was born in Osaka, Japan in 1913. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1938 and worked for Kunio Maekawa until 1941. He studied city planning at the graduate school at the University of Tokyo after which he assumed a position as an assistant professor of architecture. He received a degree in engineering in 1959. Two years later Tange established Kenzo Tange + Urtec which later became Kenzo Tange Associates. He served as professor of urban engineering at the University of Tokyo from 1963 to 1974, when he retired as professor emeritus.
Tange's early designs attempted to combine modernism with traditional Japanese forms of architecture. In the late 1960s he rejected this earlier regionalism in favor of an abstract international style. Although his styles have transformed over time, he has consistently generated designs based on a clear structural order.
Reflecting the influence of Le Corbusier, his urban philosophy dictates the generation of comprehensive cities filled with megastructures that combine service and transportation elements. Although closely associated with the Metabolist movement because of his functionalist ideas, he never belonged to the group.
Influential as a teacher of modern architecture, Tange received the gold medals of the RIBA, the AIA and the French Academy of Architecture. He also received the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Jorn Utzon
(b. Copenhagen 1918, d. Copenhagen, November 29, 2008)
Jørn Utzon was born in Copenhagen in 1918. He studied at the Academy of Arts in Copenhagen, under Kay Fisker and Steen Eiler Rasmussen. After spending the war years studying with Erik Gunnar Asplund, Utzon travelled through Europe, the United States and Mexico. He established his own practice in Copenhagen in 1950 when he returned from his travels.
Utzon has created a style marked by monumental civic buildings and unobtrusive housing projects. He incorporates the balanced discipline of Asplund, the sculptural quality of Alvar Aalto, and the organic structures of Frank Lloyd Wright into his designs. Influenced by architectural tradition, he attempts to create architecture for living that adheres to a strict structural and constructive process.
Utzon always considers site conditions and program requirements before he designs each building. He transcends architecture as art and develops his forms into poetic inventions that possess thoughtful programming, structural integrity and sculptural harmony.
Jørn Utzon died at home in Copenhagen, of a heart attack in his sleep, at age 90, early on Saturday morning, November 29, 2008.
Sir Christopher Wren
(b. Wiltshire, England 1632; d. London, England 1723)
Christopher Wren was born in Wiltshire, England in 1632. He attended Wadham College, Oxford in 1649 as a Gentleman Commoner. At Oxford he joined a group of brilliant scholars, who later formed the core of the Royal Society. As assistant to an eminent anatomist, Wren developed skills as an experimental, scientific thinker. With astronomy as his initial course of study, Wren developed skills in working models, diagrams and charting that proved useful when he entered architecture.
Wren became the Gresham Professor of Astronomy in London in 1657, at the age of twenty-five. Four years later he became the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. In 1663, Wren's uncle, the Bishop of Ely, asked him to design a new chapel for Pembroke College, Cambridge. This, his first foray into architecture, was quickly followed by more commissions.
London's Great Fire of 1666 gave Wren a chance to present a scheme to rebuild the city. Utopian in concept, it was only partially realized. In 1669 Charles II appointed Wren Surveyor General of the King's Works. As Surveyor General he supervised all work on the royal palaces. In 1673 Wren resigned his Oxford professorship because of the work load. He was also knighted in 1673.
Wren died in London in 1723.
Frank Lloyd Wright
(b. Richland Center, Wisconsin 1867; d. Taliesin West, Arizona, 1959)
Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin in 1867. He and his family settled in Madison, Wisconsin in 1877. He was educated at Second Ward School, Madison from 1879 to 1883. After a brief sting at the University of Wisconsin where he took some mechanical drawing and basic mathematics courses, Wright departed for Chicago where he spent several months in J. L. Silsbee's office before seeking employment with Adler and Sullivan.
Wright evolved a new concept of interior space in architecture. Rejecting the existing view of rooms as single-function boxes, Wright created overlapping and interpenetrating rooms with shared spaces. He designated use areas with screening devices and subtle changes in ceiling heights and created the idea of defined space as opposed to enclosed space.
Through experimentation, Wright developed the idea of the prairie house - a long, low building with hovering planes and horizontal emphasis. He developed these houses around the basic crucifix, L or T shape and utilized a basic unit system of organization. He integrated simple materials such as brick, wood, and plaster into the designs.
In 1914 Wright lost his wife and several members of his household when a servant burned down Taliesin, his home and studio in Wisconsin. Following the tragedy, he re-directed his architecture toward more solid, protective forms. Although he produced few works during the 1920s, Wright theoretically began moving in a new direction that would lead to some of his greatest works.
Walter Burley Griffin was among the many notable architects to emerge from the Wright studios. In 1932 Wright established the Taliesin Fellowship - a group of apprentices who did construction work, domestic chores, and design studies. Four years later, he designed and built both Fallingwater and the Johnson Administration Building. These designs re-invigorated Wright's career and led to a steady flow of commissions, particularly for lower middle income housing. Wright responded to the need for low income housing with the Usonian house, a development from his earlier prairie house.
During the last part of his life, Wright produced a wide range of work. Particularly important was Taliesin West, a winter retreat and studio he built in Phoenix, Arizona. He died at Taliesin West in 1959.
Minoru Yamasaki
(b. Seattle, December 1, 1912; d. February 7, 1986)
"Minoru Yamasaki was an American architect who achieved fame in the late 1950s with his sensuous, textile-like structures, and who later changed the Manhattan skyline with the two towers of the World Trade Center.
"...Yamasaki studied architecture at the University of Washington, graduating in 1934. It was during the Great Depression, a bad time for architects, and the young Yamasaki moved to New York, looking for work...
"Yamasaki used the hull-core structure again at his last pair of buildings. Completed in 1976, with Emery Roth as joint architect, the World Trade Center changed the New York skyline with two towers of great purity of form. The outer structure is steel, played straight until the towers reaches the ground, where the mullions merge in sinuous curves that once again remind one of the Gothic."
— John Winter, in Randall J. Van Vunckt, ed. International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture : Volume 1, Architects, p1006 to p1008.
The Creator's Words
"The purpose of architecture is to create an atmosphere in which man can live, work, and enjoy."
— Minoru Yamasaki, quoted on the Minoru Yamasaki Associates, Inc. web site.
"There are a few very influential architects who sincerely believe that all buildings must be 'strong'. The word 'strong' in this context seems to connote 'powerful' — that is, each building should be a monument to the virility of our society. These architects look with derision upon attempts to build a friendly, more gentle kind of building. The basis for their belief is that our culture is derived primarily from Europe, and that most of the important traditional examples of European architecture are monumental, reflecting the need of the state, church , or the feudal families — the primary patrons of these buildings — to awe and impress the masses. This is incongruous today. Although it is inevitable for architects who admire these great monumental buildings of Europe to strive for the quality most evident in them — grandeur, the elements of mysticism and power, basic to cathedrals and palaces, are also incongruous today, because the buildings we build for our times are for a totally different purpose."
— Minoru Yamasaki, in Paul Heyer, Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America, p186.