Meeting Alert: the Future of Rudolph's BOSTON GOVERNMENT SERVICE CENTER - November 19th

Paul Rudolph’s overall design drawing for the Boston Government Service Center. A significant portion of the complex—the Hurley Building at left—is still under threat of full or partial demolition—but we’ve heard that the state agency that’s seeking to develop the site may be open to including preservation as a central tenet of the project. You can help reinforce that direction at the upcoming Public Meeting on November 19th.

One of the earlier reports, commissioned by DCAMM (the state agency planning to move ahead with development of the site—including possibly demolishing all or part of the Hurley Building.). We examined the various options they were considering, presented in that report, in an article here.

On of the strategies of those who want to demolish all or part of the Boston Government Service Center’s Hurley Building is to spread the idea that Rudolph was not the prime designer of the complex (including Hurley)—a myth we’ve addressed here.

Shown above is a model of the complex, with the Hurley Building closest to the front-left of the picture (the model also includes the unbuilt office tower.) In the background can be seen architectural drawings of the complex: an elevation and numerous floor plans. Around the model are key players in the creation of the Boston Government Service Center: (left-to-right) Nathaniel Becker, Dick Thissen, Charles Gibbons, Joseph P. Richardson, Edward Logue, Jeremiah Sundell, Unidentified (George Berlow or William Pedersen?)—and Paul Rudolph at far right.

THE SITUATION:

The BOSTON GOVERNMENT SERVICE CENTER—one of Paul Rudolph’s largest and most multifaceted public buidings—remains threatened.

The state has proposed developing the site—and a key part of their plan is handing-off an integral part of the complex—the HURLEY BUILDING—to a developer. There have been various reports and meetings to present the state’s plans—and they’ve received a lot of push-back.

We’ve published several articles on the building, including ones examining and questioning this development project (like this one, which looked at the alternatives the state’s been considering.) Several critical letters, statements, and reports—protesting the assumption that demolition is the only path to a positive future for this complex—have been issued, including from the Boston Preservation Alliance and Docomomo-New England.

Even so, the state’s “messaging” about the project (while offering some useful information and ideas) also persists in trying to divorce Paul Rudolph from design responsibility for the building—thus attempting to undermine the Hurley Building’s architectural significance (and we’ve addressed that myth here.)

A POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT?

Now the project will be opened to additional public feedback at a November public meeting.

That’s important because: the state agency that’s planning on developing the site (DCAMM: the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance) seems to have become receptive to including preservation as a central tenet of the project. Their recent statements about the Hurley development indicate they are going in this positive direction—and it would be good to reinforce this in the upcoming public meeting. So you’re invited to attend and speak out about preserving the integrity of this Rudolph design.

MEETING ALERT:

Soon— Thursday, November 19th, at 6:30PM —there will be a VIRTUAL [Zoom] PUBLIC MEETING about the project.

DCAMM says that:

• Attendees will learn about the state’s goals for the redevelopment, and how they’ll work to ensure getting a “redevelopment partner” that will help to achieve those goals

• Staff will present draft Design Guidelines for the redevelopment

• Staff will ask for your feedback

You are invited to attend (and attendance is Free)

TAKE ACTION:

• Attend the Public ZOOM meeting on Thursday, November 19th, 6:30 PM—and speak out: Important information will be shared and your presence will show support for the preservation of this important work of public architecture. Full meeting info is below—but you must RSVP (see link below.)

• Sign the petition: “Save the Boston Government Service Center” — sign it HERE - and share it with your friends and all who appreciate great architecture.

A corner view of the Hurley Building (with a portion of the body of the building in the background at right)—an integral part of of the Boston Government Service Center designed by Paul Rudolph. Public input is invited at November 19th’s ZOOM meeting—and you’re urged to attend and comment (see registration info below).

HOW TO ATTEND THE MEETING:

NAME OF EVENT: Charles F. Hurley Building Redevelopment

DATE & TIME: Thursday, November 19, 2020 — 6:30 PM

FORMAT: Virtual (“ZOOM”) Public Meeting

TO ATTEND: the meeting is Free and Open-To-The-Public—but you must RSVP (see below)

RSVP HERE: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZckduCqpj4oE9cIeuXZcbcV34qntuuqoSyV

SPONSORED BY: Massachusetts’ Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM)

ZOOM REGISTRATION ASSISTANCE: If you need assistance accessing the ZOOM registration link, please email apoggenburg@reginavilla.com -or- call (617) 357-5772 x 26 by no later than Friday, November 13th

DCAMM WEBSITE [Note: this is the government’s current info page on the project]: https://www.mass.gov/service-details/charles-f-hurley-building-redevelopment

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS TO DCAMM ABOUT THIS PROJECT: e-mail them to: HurleyReDev.dcamm@mass.gov.

The artist’s impression of the Great Seal of the United States—a section of one of Constantino Nivola’s impressive and inspiring murals within the Boston Government Service Center’s Hurley Building. These murals cannot be moved—adding to the urgency that the Hurley building be preserved.

PHOTO CREDITS:

Paul Rudolph Drawing of Overall Design of the Boston Government Service Center: © The estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Key players in the creation of the Boston Government Service Center: news photo, source unknown; Corner View of the Hurley Building: Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith; Nivola Mural Eagle: Photo by Kelvin Dickinson © The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

DOCOMOMO's “Auction For Modernism” (and we’re donating something you’ll definitely want to bid on!)

DOCOMOMO US HAS A CLEAR AND COMPELLING MISSION:

Enriching our communities and our culture through the understanding, appreciation and preservation of modern architecture and design.

DOCOMOM US does that through advocacy, education, documentation, and providing leadership and knowledge to demonstrate the importance of modern design principles for these important parts of American history and culture.

They’re energetic, creative, resourceful—and they never stop!

Whether it’s fighting to preserve significant buildings, advising on adaptive reuse, or serving as a resource for local groups and activists, they’re always ready to generously share their knowledge and positive energies. At right you can see part of their recent newsletter, with some updates on what they’ve been involved with—including our fight to save Paul Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome building.

THE AUCTION FOR MODERNISM (IT’S STARTING NOW)

To keep their DOCOMOMO US’ work going forward, they’re having the most amazing fundraising auction—The Auction For Modernism—and we’re proud that the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation is participating.

What can you bid for? Superb examples of Modern Design: furniture, architect’s original drawings, rare books, architectural prints and photos, private tours, original artworks, jewelry, ceramics, overnight or weekend stays in modern masterworks (and even an I.M. Pei doll!)

BID FOR: A VIP TOUR OF A PAUL RUDOLPH MASTERWORK

We’re helping: the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation is donating—for you to bid on—a private tour of the Paul Rudolph-designed Modulightor Building, and the winning bidder will also receive two books on Rudolph’s life and legacy.

At the top of this post and below you can see photos of some of the richly layered private interiors in the Modulightor Building. You and your guests will get a VIP tour, and have time to explore these intriguing, intimate spaces in a building designed by Rudolph at the height of his powers.

To see all of auction’s many tempting items, go here.

But if you want to go directly to bid for your Modulightor Building tour and book package, go here.

PHOTO CREDITS:

Evening view of the exterior of the Modulightor Building: Photograph © Joe Polowczuk, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation Archives

Interiors of the Modulightor building: Photographs © Anne Broder, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation Archives

Auction page view (at top) of an interior of Modulightor Building with Picasso sculpture and staircase: Photograph by Donald Luckenbill © The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation Archives

It's Paul Rudolph's 102nd Birthday - Friday, October 23, 2020

102 years ago— 1918 — What important things were happening then?

Of course, what gets highlighted about 1918 was the continuing carnage of World War One; and the beginning of the “Spanish Flu”—whose first wave was commencing to kill multi-thousands (and, ultimately, millions by the time it ended two years later.)

But what about October, 1918 in particular? — And did any positive things happen that month?

Yes, a few:

• T.E. Lawrence— “Lawrence of Arabia” —leads a stunning military victory in Damascus.

• Stonehenge, which had been in private hands, is donated to the people of Britain. Thus, this site of world-class significance becomes officially part of the nation’s treasury of historical monuments.

• Germany agreed to key concessions, which led to the final armistice in the following month—and ultimately the end of World War One.

• A new world typing speed record is achieved. That may not be significant in itself, but that such a contest was held is an indication of the increasing importance of machinery in office operations.

• ANSI - the American National Standards Institute - was formed. This too might seem like an esoteric event—but the application of rigorously arrived-at standards, to a large field of products, manufacturing, cleanliness, and with consequences for safety, greatly contributed to the quality of life.

But the event that we are most focused upon is the birth of architect Paul Rudolph, who was born on October 23, 1918.

By-the-way: 1918 is notable for another event: the first recorded use of the term “formwork”—the kind used in concrete construction. Since Paul Rudolph is so closely associated with the powerful use of concrete in architecture, for him to have shared a year with that word is most fitting!

RUDOLPH THROUGH THE YEARS: A VISUAL CELEBRATION

Since it is Paul Rudolph’s birthday—and he had a full life that was endlessly creative and prolific—we thought you might enjoy seeing views from different points in his personal and professional growth. Here is a small photo album, concisely showing snapshots from some important stages in his life.

Paul Rudolph (left) with family, visiting Florida Southern College—a design by Frank Lloyd Wright (whom he profoundly admired.)

Rudolph, a US Navy officer during World War II, was stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, working on ship construction and repair.

Rudolph (front right) with some fellow students in the architecture program at Harvard, where he studied with Walter Gropius.

On the raised platform of his Sanderling Beach Club in Florida—a project that extended his oeuvre beyond residential design.

Within his Yale Art & Architecture Building (now Rudolph Hall), shown against the centrally located—and luminous—drafting space.

In front of his Married Students Housing at Yale. University buildings would form a significant part of Rudolph’s oeuvre.

Increasing national and international fame. A detail from the cover of Progressive Architecture: a collage of the Yale A&A building and Rudolph.

Rudolph on the construction site for his New Haven Temple Street Garage—as he moved into the design of large civic structures.

Rudolph’s architectural office in New York, a multi-level, light-filled space, in which his design models and drawings were on display.

Famed for his architectural drawings, especially dramatic architectural perspectives—a large volume is published on his masterful graphics.

Rudolph (right) at the ground-breaking for Burroughs Wellcome, standing next to Nobel Prize winner George Hitchings.

At his NYC “Quadruplex” penthouse home—continually at work on design, architecture, and the challenges of modern urbanism.

LEARNING MORE ABOUT RUDOLPH’S LIFE & CAREER

Paul Rudolph had an active life, and his prolific career spanned a dynamic half-a-century—during which he was designing architecture & interiors, planning at an urban scale, teaching, thinking, writing, and inspiring others. You can read a fine, concise biography of Rudolph here, and also read this full-length, scholarly study—and further books on fascinating aspects of his work can be obtained through the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation here.

KEEPING UP WITH PAUL RUDOLPH

Rudolph is always in the news: previously “undiscovered” projects come to light, new books and articles come out, we are continually fighting preservations battles to preserve his legacy, and beautiful homes he designed come on the market.

We can keep you up-to-date with bulletins about the latest Rudolph-ian developments. TO GET UPDATES: please join our foundation’s mailing list—and there’s a free sign-up at the bottom of this page.

PHOTO CREDITS:

First row, left: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; First row, middle: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; First row, right: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Second row, left: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Second row, middle: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Second row, right: Photo by Judith York Newman, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Third row, left: Courtesy of US Modernist Library; Third row, middle: Photo by Judith York Newman, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Third row, right: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Fourth row, left: from the library of the The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Fourth row, middle: news photo, source unknown: Fourth row, right: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Kickstarter Campaign Launched to Render Rudolph Project

Rudolph’s Perspective Rendering of the unbuilt Gatot Subroto project for Jakarta, Indonesia. Image © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

A Kickstarter campaign has been launched by researcher and author Eric Wolff to professionally render one of Paul Rudolph’s little-known late works, the unbuilt Gatot Subroto project in Jakarta, Indonesia.

From the kickstarter site:

Some refer to his late works in Asia as ”seven buildings including a couple of villas” and describe Rudolph’s late career as a kind of afterthought to a, at times controversial but, prolific career.  My research into Rudolph’s archives, interviews with his office personnel and visits to his buildings in Asia, reveal that Rudolph‘s late career period was not only bountiful, but reflects a period where Rudolph was performing at the peak of his capabilities and sensibilities producing some of his finest works ever.  In his late career (1978 - 1997), Rudolph participated in about 50 projects and completed upwards of 20 buildings in Asia, cementing his place alongside, and sometimes in direct competition with, architectural titans like Richard Meier, I.M. Pei, Kenzo Tange and John Portman.  Rudolph’s late works are not well known and have not been fully evaluated, in this project I am recreating select Paul Rudolph buildings digitally from his archived drawings/material and rendering them into illustration.

Importantly, many of the ”undiscovered” Asian works exemplify Rudolph‘s specific contributions to Modernist Architecture.  You do not have to love Rudolph's buildings to appreciate that he pushed the envelope in terms of sculptural design; but he also innovated in areas of sustainability and structure.  In this project I will illustrate the ambitious Gatot Subroto (unbuilt), that was designed for Jakarta, Indonesia as an ”office village” with 875,000 square feet of office space, and 450,000 square feet of parking.  The outcome will be a full color poster sized realistic rendering of the Gatot Subroto at dusk, as well if budget allows several close up realistic renderings of the buildings interior and roof garden spaces.

The late works in Asia demonstrate how the Modernist principles base of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright were combined and evolved by Paul Rudolph to create a unique new vocabulary that would inspire today’s contemporary architects.

The Gatot Subroto (Jakarta, Indonesia 1990) is an example of Rudolph’s unique point of view.  The client requested eight towers to be developed on an existing property as an office condominium complex in which the Dharmala group would occupy part of the space.  Rudolph’s initial designs reflected the request of eight towers, joined by floors spanning the complex reading as a ”perforated wall”.  The client wanted a more cohesive look from the busy street and in order to attract top clients, did not want their own anchor space to dominate the design.  Rudolph, heeding the client feedback, in his final design created a masterpiece!

The Gatot Subroto represents one of the earliest examples of sustainability in architecture.  its windows are slanted and shaded to deflect the mid-day Indonesian sun.  Between the cantilevered three floor blocks are void-decks capped with roof garden terraces, increasing the green factor higher than the buildings footprint.  A testament to sustainability before it was even in fashion.

Paul Rudolph’s original project model for the Gatot Subroto project. Image © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

Mr. Wolff began researching the architect’s late designs for his upcoming book RUDOLPH :: RENAISSANCE Evaluating Paul Rudolph’s contributions to Architecture through his undiscovered late works until in-person activities were curtailed due to COVID-19.  Not to be deterred, he began to recreate Rudolph's “unbuilt” designs as digital models.  

The Gatot Subroto model in progress. Image courtesy Eric Wolff.

According to Mr. Wolff,

“As part of my research I am digitally ‘building’ the Gatot Subroto based on drawings and models from Rudolph’s uncatalogued materials.  I am working with a firm to render my digital ‘build’ into a life-like poster sized illustration of the building.  We will render a scene with the building as seen from the street at dusk to emphasize the structure and fenestration.  The output will be a large full-color poster illustration of the Gatot Subroto at dusk, which we will have professionally printed and available for donors. The illustration will later be used in the book and at events promoting the book.

To illustrate these designs an exciting collaboration with Design Distill was born.  Design Distill is a multidisciplinary group that has the passion, talents and capabilities to translate my research of Paul Rudolph’s late works into visualizations, bringing the buildings to life so they can be evaluated and celebrated.

Rudolph’s buildings need to be experienced to be properly critiqued; making life-like  illustrations will help viewers experience the buildings and interior spaces more completely.  The digitization will help myself and other researchers study the structural and design elements intended by Rudolph.  It will ”preserve” the buildings as they were intended to be built but with the ability to look at them in three dimensions and with the possibility of exporting the files for 3-D printing.

Importantly, the ‘eye candy’ of the buildings mask important contributions and innovations that Rudolph gave to the world of architecture, and through the rendering of his works his design principles can be further evaluated.  This project will re-create the Gatot Subroto from blueprints, models and drawings and produce realistic renderings of the exterior, roof gardens and select interior spaces so they can be better understood and evaluated.  The funding from this Kickstarter has been budgeted specifically for the work related to the Gatot Subroto.

The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation’s mission includes supporting research about Mr. Rudolph’s architectural legacy and we are assisting Mr. Wolff’s kickstarter campaign as well as his future book.

We encourage you to help make this project a reality by going to the kickstarter link here and please share this project with your friends. Let’s see the Gatot Subroto project as Rudolph had intended!

Rudolph's "Vocabulary” of Form—at BURROUGHS WELLCOME and Beyond

The Burroughs Welcome building, using a vocabulary of forms which combine a mountain-like profile (reflecting the context of the North Carolina terrain where it is located); along with growing cells (possibly communicating the nature of the biological research conducted within). Image courtesy of the Joseph W. Molitor architectural photographs collection, located in Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives

AN ARCHITECT’S “VOCABULARY” OF FORM

Architectural historians and critics sometimes speak of an architect’s “vocabulary”—by which the don’t mean the words a designer chooses when talking or writing about their work. Rather: they primarily mean the set of forms—-volumes, shapes, geometries—with which the architect usually works, and to which they most often turn when dealing with architectural challenges. Like an individual’s most frequently used vocabulary of words, these forms are the terms which an individual architect characteristically utilizes for design solutions.

Biomorphic forms are part of the design “vocabulary” of the architect of this design: the Saldarini House by Vittorio Giorgini. Photo by MPThompsonCO1, via Wikimedia Commons.

For example, if one reviews an architect’s work, and curvaceously shaped and organically linked spaces seem to be the designer’s most often used set of shapes, then one can say their design “vocabulary” is composed primarily of organic (or biomorphic) forms of great plasticity. The work of architect Vittorio Giorgini, like the house he designed in Italy shown at right, would be an instance. Giorgini, though he could design in a variety of modes, most often seems to have used a vocabulary of organic forms.

A similar claim about “vocabulary” could be made if an architect’s work had a preponderance of rectilinear/grid-like forms, like Mies -or- alternatively, if the architect used lines that seemed to continually fracture and angle with the surprise and grace of the later work of Rudolph Steiner.

N.B.: It’s important to note that an architect’s formal “vocabulary” is a little different from an architect’s “style” (though they do overlap.) Architectural theorist Michael Brill defined style as the observable problem-solving “tendencies” of an architect. When a particular architect is confronted with a design problem, and they almost always react a particular way (that they show a tendency to approach design challenges with a frequently used solution or technique)—that would be a significant aspect of their style. Thus, if an architect always used symmetry for solving design problems, (or conversely, like Paul Rudolph, almost never used it!) that’s a facet of their style. Of if an architect, when dealing with a planning problem, often disperses the spaces over the site (or, conversely, compacts them densely,) such a tendency would be part of that architect’s “style.”

WHEN AND ARCHITECT’S VOCABULARY IS HARD TO DEFINE

We have to acknowledge that—with some architects more than others—it’s hard to define their architectural “vocabulary.” Indeed, it would be dishonest (and dishonoring) to rigidly circumscribe those designers who are amazing creative spirits, whose vocabulary has ranged over the whole universe of form—and that would certainly be true for Rudolph.

Paul Rudolph’s perspective rendering and plan for a Manager’s Office for the Parking Authority. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

In a recent post—BURROUGHS WELLCOME: GEOMETRY AND RUDOLPH’S DESIGN—we focused upon geometry (and especially crystalline forms) as a possible design source or inspiration in Paul Rudolph’s work.

But that hardly defines Paul Rudolph, whose extensive work (produced over a half-century career) engaged with the greatest range of forms. A small (but telling) counter-example, to the use of crystal forms, would be this regrettably unbuilt design from 1961: a Manager’s Office for the Parking Authority for New Haven. Certainly, if one knows Rudolph’s work, one can sense that it fits well into his oeuvre. Yet it has almost nothing to do with any kind of crystalline geometry—indeed, it seems to be on the opposite end of the range of forms.

BUT AN ARCHTIECT’S VOCABULARY IS A LEGITIMATE AREA OF INQUIRY—EVEN FOR THE MOST CREATIVE DESIGNERS

Even with the caveat above—reminding of us to avoid pigeonholing architects by a too-limited view of their architectural “vocabulary”—it still can be illuminating to look for patterns that repeat in their work, as well as similar forms in the works of their contemporaries (so that the possibility of creative '“cross-pollination” can be discerned.)

There are forms which come up, repeatedly in Rudolph’s work, which have a “family resemblance"—and the form we’ll focus upon here is the most powerful to be found in nature: the Mountain.

“BUILDINGS LIKE MOUNTAINS”

Hugh Ferris (1889-1962) was the the architectural profession’s favorite renderer from the 1920’s to mid-century. He was the “go to” visualizer, whose charcoal perspective drawings were utilized by numerous (and famous) architects of the era—especially during the building boom of the teens and 1920’s, a time when hundreds of skyscrapers and ambitious projects were being proposed (and many erected) across the US.

In the early 192o’s he was called upon to create a set of renderings that would show the volumes which could arise under the proposed NYC regulations for building zoning/height/volume/floor area. The images he produced make clear that even a by-the-book adherence to the rules was no barrier to creating architectural work of profoundest power.

Although these drawings were done by Ferriss for practical, illustrative purposes, what interests us here is the mountain-like quality radiated by these images.

In another inspired drawing, captioned by Ferriss “Buildings Like Mountains,” he conveyed a sense of solidity and elemental, dramatic power—a spirit which architects could bring to their designs. His vision is of a building which seems in the process of birth, emerging from the rock of a towering mountain range.

Hugh Ferriss’ drawing, “Buildings Like Mountains.” Courtesy of Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives

This is design power—and most architects embrace the dramatic possibilities of such architectonic power.

MOUNTAINS THAT ARE BULDINGS

Our earlier post, on crystalline/hexagonal form, included looking at Frank Lloyd Wright—one of the architects Rudolph supremely admired (perhaps the most of all), and Wright’s use of those geometries.

One example serves to show Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in this vein (and also that his mastery—both geometric and architectural—extended to the end of his seven active decades as a designer.) The below-left photo is of the Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park, PA, a Wright project from the 1950’s. Below-right is a model of the building, lit from within like a glowing crystal. [That’s not an illusory effect, as most of the roof of the building is made of a translucent material—so not only did this allow abundant light in during the day, but at night it sends out a glow.]

But look at the scale of the thing (which one can estimate from the size of the doors)! The building comes across as a human-constructed mountain, rising and receding with serene majesty and power, almost aloof from pedestrian concerns—or as Jane Austen put it:

“What Are Men To Rocks And Mountains?”

RUDOLPH AT BURROUGHS WELLCOME

For the Burroughs Wellcome Building, Paul Rudolph explicitly referenced the North Carolina context, and how it led him to a mountain-like (or hill-like) form. He wrote:

“This complex climbs up and down a beautiful ridge in the green hills of North Carolina and is architecturally an extension of its site.”

And one can see that shape in his drawings:

Paul Rudolph’s section drawing through the central body of the Burroughs Wellcome headquarters and research center, in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. This image—a “presentation drawing” meant to dramatically and convincingly convey the architect’s idea—cuts through the famous entry lobby. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Rudolph’s construction-section drawing through the central body of the Burroughs Wellcome building, cut at almost the same spot as the drawing to the left (and it also includes part of the building’s entry lobby.) It is reproduced here at nearly the same scale as the left’s presentation drawing, so they can be easily compared. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

THE MOUNTAIN (AND HILLS) IN RUDOLPH’S dESIGN VOCABULARY

Paul Rudolph explored and used and abundance of forms—his design “vocabulary” was expansive and embracing of all possibilities (including some he invented).

But there are patterns. We don’t know if we’re the first to look at his extensive oeuvre for mountain-like (or hill-like) forms, but if one looks, they’re there—and in abundance. For example, his proposal for St. Boniface in Florida has the various church structures emerging from the ground, as through pushed-up by geological forces. Below is a selection of projects with such forms, from across Rudolph’s entire career.

St. Boniface Episcopal Church

Beth-El Synagogue

Rudolph’s sketch for the LOMEX project—creating a mountain range?

Apartment Hotel in Jerusalem

Morgan Annex

Knott Residence

East Northport Synagogue Addition

Central Suffolk Office Park

Maris Stella University Chapel

Niagara Falls Central Library

Television Station, Amarillo, Texas The form here is particularly mountain-like, and we have written a whole article about this fascinating building, here.

YOU CAN HELP SAVE BURROUGHS WELLCOME !

The Burroughs Wellcome building is threated with imminent demolition.

It’s loss would be a disaster—a titanic waste of our nation’s cultural heritage. Remember:

When a great building is destroyed, there are no second chances.

NOW— THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO:

• Sign the petition to save Burroughs Wellcome— Please sign it here.

• We can keep you up-to-date with bulletins about the latest developments. To get them, please join our foundation’s mailing list: you’ll get all the updates, (as well as other Rudolphian news.)—you can sign-up at the bottom of this page

Even the currently empty lobby of Burroughs Wellcome still has the awe-inducing grandeur of a geological formation of mountain-range scale. Such a special work of architecture—a part of our national heritage—should not be lost. Photograph courtesy of © PJ McDonnell, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation Archives

PHOTO CREDITS for the two images of the Wright temple, and the eleven examples of mountain-like forms in the work of Paul Rudolph, shown in the above post: Beth Sholom Synagogue, exterior view: photo by Smallbones, via Wikimedia Commons; Beth Sholom Synagogue, model: photo by Ricardo Tulio Gandelman, via Wikimedia Commons; Saint Boniface Episcopal Church: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Beth-El Synagogue: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; LOMEX: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Apartment Hotel in Jersalem: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Morgan Annex: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Knott Residence: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; East Northport Synagogue Addition: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Central Suffolk Office Park: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Maris Stella University Chapel: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Niagara Falls Central Library: Photograph by Kelvin Dickinson, archives of The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Television station, Amarillo, Texas: Photo © Ben Koush

The Clear & Passionate Voice for Great Architecture— Especially Burroughs Wellcome

Kate Wagner’s essay—defending Paul Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome Building, and taking on the shallowness with which great architecture is often devalued—opens with a dramatic view of the Burroughs Wellcome Building by the distinguished architectural photographer Joseph Molitor. Image courtesy of Joseph W. Molitor architectural photographs collection. Located in Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives

A VOICE FOR SANITY IN ARCHITECTURE—LIKE NONE OTHER TODAY

Who is the most incisive, clear-eyed, and forthright critic on today’s architectural scene?

As an irrepressible voice for architectural sanity, KATE WAGNER has few rivals. Thus we were struck (and delighted) by her recent, brilliant defense of Paul Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome Building—one of the architect’s most exciting and masterful designs, which is now threatened with demolition—in her essay, “This Brutal World”

A sample image from the McMansion Hell website, in which a photo of a McMansion is analyzed by Wagner.

For those not familiar with Kate Wagner’s work, it’s always good to recount that she first came to prominence with her take-no-prisoners website, McMansion Hell—a space where her talent for giving undiluted assessments of the pretentions, impracticalities, and wasteful tastelessness of “McMansions” (and the culture that produced them) had ample space to be displayed.

If you’re not already an admirer of her analyses, this sampling will give you and idea of Wagner’s direct-as-nails rhetoric (as applied to one of the houses she was critiquing on that website):

“If you combine all of the insipid elements of the other houses: mismatched windows; massive, chaotic rooflines; weird asphalt donut landscaping; pompous entrances, and tacked on masses; you’d get this house. The more one looks at this house the more upsetting it becomes . . . . What sends this one over the top is its surroundings: lush trees and clear skies that have been desecrated in order to build absolute garbage.”

But her writings and wise advocacy have not just been about spotlighting overcooked (and undertalented) design. She has focused upon other vital issues such as land use, urbanism, residential space planning, and the history of architectural styles. Wagner has been a featured writer in Architectural Digest, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, Curbed, and other venues—and now can be read in The New Republic.

The essay appeared in the September 29, 2020 on-line edition of The Architect’s Newspaper-East.

DEFENDING PAUL RUDOLPH’S WORK—AND THE TREASURES OF GREAT ARCHITECTURE

Her essay, “This Brutal World” went well beyond considering the fate of that great building, Burroughs Wellcome—for she also offered a powerful attack on the cultural/economic world-view which places so little value on our country’s national treasures of architecture.

She starts by sharing her first powerful encounter, as a youngster, with a Paul Rudolph building: the amazing (and now disfigured) Orange County Government Center, in Goshen, NY—and how that impacted her entire life.

The Orange County Government Center, in Goshen, NY—as designed by Rudolph (and before its present disfigurement). Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith

“Many years ago, long before I became an architecture critic, I was a 14-year-old stuck in the back of a Buick crossover whose driver, my mother, had taken a wrong turn while looking for the Goshen, New York, Dunkin Donuts. We ended up in the parking lot of the most extraordinary building I had ever seen—Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center, more commonly known as the Goshen Building.”

“. . . .Despite the outward signs of disrepair, the breath seized in my chest and as my eyes drifted over the compression and expansion of the building’s extruded masses, I realized that I had stumbled upon something extraordinary. I asked my mother, who grew up in Goshen and was visiting relatives there, if she knew what the building was. She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Ugh, that’s the DMV.’”

“When we returned home to North Carolina from our family reunion, I took to the computer and searched for the Goshen, New York Department of Motor Vehicles. Some clicking got me through to the Wikipedia page for Paul Rudolph, a mid-century architect who was once the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. It was at that point I fell in love and became obsessed—not only with Rudolph’s work, but with architecture as a whole.”

“My life is marked by a threshold of before and after Paul Rudolph.”

At right are some of the buildings which Kate Wagner mentions in her article: architecture by Paul Rudolph that has been demolished, damaged, or—like Burroughs Wellcome and the Boston Government Service Center—are currently under threat. From top-to-bottom: Shoreline Apartments, Micheels Residence, Christian Science Center, Boston Government Service Center, Burroughs Wellcome.

And Kate Wagner tells of the actions that she began taking:

Photographic credits for the above five images, from top-to-bottom: Image courtesy of Joseph W. Molitor architectural photographs collection. Located in Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives; © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith; Archives of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith

“In 2010, I had stumbled on a news article about the pending demolition of the Goshen Building. I was devastated.”

“I got into many arguments with my mother, who at the time shared the majority opinion of Goshenites and thought the building an unlovable eyesore. I decided to do everything that I, a high-school sophomore hundreds of miles away, could to save it. I wrote letters to Goshen politicians, my first-ever writings on architecture; I donated my babysitting money to Docomomo. . . .I was a freshman in college. I was beginning graduate school when Orange County finished lobotomizing Rudolph’s building with a horrific contemporary addition. Reflecting on the loss years later, I can’t help but be upset.”

Her article goes into Rudolph’s career, but then notes the threats to the survival of other parts of his oeuvre—the latest of which, in jeopardy, is Burroughs Wellcome.

“Rudolph designed numerous houses around the country and a great many important projects including the Yale Art & Architecture Building, the Boston Government Service Center, and numerous buildings for the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. However, Rudolph lived long enough to see the tide turn against modern architecture, and his reputation tarnished as a result. The wrecking ball soon tore through Rudolph’s portfolio. Riverview, Buffalo’s Shoreline Apartments, houses in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Florida, and the Christian Science Organization Building rank among the fallen, while the Boston Government Service Center is under grave threat. The latest victim in this saga of devastation is his Burroughs Wellcome Co. Headquarters and Research Building in Durham, North Carolina.”

There is a great deal more in Kate Wagner’s fine essay (and we urge you to read it—in full—here.) But it might be good to close by sharing excerpts from some of the points she makes about the larger issues to which she brings her powerful focus:

“I. . . .think that I am a fool for believing that the tide of public opinion has changed enough to have prevented a major work of architecture from being carelessly demolished. I am an even bigger fool for believing that public opinion is what stops the destruction of works of art—that the core problem is awareness rather than money. . . .It doesn’t matter if Burroughs Wellcome is priceless, unique, a work of spatial, formal brilliance. To its owners it is a burden, a resource sink, a negative sign on a spreadsheet. . . .It is an asset of business, an object whose use-value will always be subornidated to its exchange value. . . .”

“I write this as a means of processing the impending loss of a building I care deeply about as a historian and as an individual, but also because I believe that the preservation community is facing a hard truth: Their battle is not against one bulldozer-happy company or developer but against an economic system that reduces architecture to an asset that sits upon an even more valuable asset—land. The court of public opinion has no say over the rule of the wallet, and even the success of a decade-long campaign to recuperate Brutalism from the trash heap of history cannot alone save Burroughs Wellcome from the wrecking ball. Time repeats itself—I once sat in a chair in my room on a laptop typing up letters and school assignments devoted to saving the Goshen Building; ten years later, I sit in my office and type this essay about mourning another building by the same architect. Both times, despite it all, grief is mixed with hope.”

Note: We hope that the demolition of the Burroughs Wellcome Building is not inevitably “impending”—and the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation is fighting to save it. Please see below about how you can help.

The threat to Burroughs Wellcome is part of a pervasive problem, as is illustrated here: the same web-page in The Architect’s Newspaper (on which Kate Wagner’s article appeared) also showed links to other articles—each of which is about the demolition of good and/or interesting modern buildings.

YOU CAN HELP SAVE BURROUGHS WELLCOME !

The Burroughs Wellcome building is threated with imminent demolition.

It’s loss would be a disaster—a titanic waste of our nation’s cultural heritage. Remember:

When a great building is destroyed, there are no second chances.

NOW— THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO:

• Sign the petition to save Burroughs Wellcome— Please sign it here.

• We can keep you up-to-date with bulletins about the latest developments. To get them, please join our foundation’s mailing list: you’ll get all the updates, (as well as other Rudolphian news.)—you can sign-up at the bottom of this page

Burroughs Wellcome’s famous, soaring entry lobby, which Kate Wagner had heard the present owners were going to use as part of a visitor’s center. That was before their current intentions, for demolition of the building, became known. Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith

Burroughs Wellcome: Geometry and Rudolph's Design

Burroughs Welcome building. Image courtesy of Joseph W. Molitor architectural photographs. Located in Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives

Paul Rudolph’s sketch study for the East elevation of administration wing of the Burroughs Wellcome building in North Carolina. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

THE UNITY oF ARCHITECTURE AND GEOMETRY

Geometry emerging out of wild nature? In fact, this is a natural formation—perhaps showing that nature itself has inherent geometric tendencies. Pyrite cubic crystals on marlstone. Photo by Carles Millan. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

“Architecture is. . . .at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world.”

— Frank Lloyd Wright

Architects and geometry—are they not eternally linked? Even in the most organically curvilinear design, a trained eye can detect the underlying geometric order.

Perhaps their indissoluble marriage can be traced to the essence the architectural task. Rocco Leonardis—an architect and friend of Paul Rudolph’s—has stated it this way:

“Architects create wholes."

and such is the power (and flexibility) of geometry that it is the prime discipline and tool by which architects can bring a sense of order and “wholeness”—unity—to their designs.

POWER IN WRIGHTIAN GEOMETRIES

An ornamental detail from a Frank Lloyd Wright building in Pennsylvania. Hexagonal shapes are implicit in the forms Wright used here.. Image courtesy of Montgomery County Planning Commission via Wikimedia Commons.

Among the founders of Modern architecture no one knew this better than Frank Lloyd Wright.

It’s worth underlining that Wright was one of the most powerful influences on Paul Rudolph—something he never failed to acknowledge. Wright’s impact on Rudolph started from a very young age. Rudolph recounts:

“I was twelve or fourteen when I first saw a Frank Lloyd Wright house. That was in Florence, Alabama. I forget how I knew about this house, but I did, so I got my parents to drive over. . . . .There are very few architects whose work I would go out of my way to see, but I would always go to see anything, even the worst, of Wright’s.”

Hexagonal seat back for the “Peacock Chair” which Frank Lloyd Wright designed, in the early 1920’s, for the Imperial Hotel in Japan. Photo by Tim Evanson. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

And no one had greater virtuosity than Wright, when it came to utilizing geometry for generating and taming architectural form.

As an example: Wright’s floor plans often utilized geometric grids. But although he was a master at using orthogonal [square] grids for the layout of residences and other building types, he used a variety of grids: triangular, diamond, and hexagonal. One can see this in a number of Wright’s works, from smaller objects to which he turned his attention (like a chair for the Imperial Hotel he designed in Japan) -to- his elaborately developed and detailed floor plans for the Price Tower (one of which is shown below).

In the three Wright house designs, shown below, he uses geometric grids (one diamond and two hexagonal) to help regulate the placement of walls and other elements.

Berger house.

Bazett House

Richardson house.

RUDOLPH: CRYSTAL GEOMETRY IN THE ELEVATIONS

A crystal, Labradorite—in this example, showing a hexagonal geometry. Photograph by Martin Thoma. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Hexagonal geometry is of particular interest, as it relates to several examples of Rudolph’s work—and, in particular, to one of Rudolph’s best buildings: the US headquarters and research center that he designed for the pharmaceutical giant, Burroughs Wellcome.

What’s also interesting—and is manifest in Burroughs Wellcome’s design—are what appear to be the geometries associated with nature’s crystals. At Burroughs Wellcome, this is most noticeable in his use of “extended” hexagons—the kind where the form appears to be stretched out.

Nature provides an abundance of examples, both from mineral and snow crystals.

ABOVE: Pale blue transparent beryl crystal, surrounded by hexagonal crystals of muscovite. Photo by Carles Millan. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

RIGHT: A snow crystal, in which extended hexagonal geometries can be seen. Image by the Electron and Confocal Microscopy Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture.

In Rudolph’s design these extended crystal volumes appear to pulse forward and backward, giving a sense that the building has a vivid metabolism of its own—a most appropriate symbolism for a major center for biomedical research!

A general view of one wing of the Burroughs Wellcome Building, showing the that the crystalline geometry primarily manifested along its ends. Image courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.

The extended hexagonal volumes, pushing forward and receding, at one end of the building.. Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith

Nobel Prize winners Gertrude Elion and William Hitchings, who did much of their research work at Burroughs Wellcome. Photo by Will & Deni McIntyre. Courtesy GSK RTP Heritage Center.

Main Building Addition from 1976. It manifests extended hexagon geometries, but in a stacked and rhythmic pattern. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

Rudolph extended these geometries into his design for the interiors—showing up in hallways, passages, and the dramatic dining room that he created for one of the building’s additions.

ABOVE: Dining Room, designed by Rudolph. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation. RIGHT: Hexagonal derived geometry at a doorway passage. Photo by Henry L. Kampenhoefner. © Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

RUDOLPH: CRYSTAL GEOMETRY IN THE PLANNING

Like any architectural design, Burroughs Wellcome went thorough development, revision, and refinement. An early design scheme of Rudolph’s shows the building’s entry plaza would have featured large stepped areas. These would have created an impressive, ziggurat-like entry experience (and visual platform) for the building. While we can’t argue with the final (and superb) design that was built, it is intriguing to contemplate what the entry experience of the building would have been like, had they gone forward with this earlier approach.

Early scheme for the building. ©The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

Detail of rendering of early scheme. ©The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

Rudolph freely admitted that he was influenced by everything he experienced—or as he put it:

“Well, I am influenced by everything I see, hear, feel, smell, touch, and so on.”

So discerning the exact influences any of his designs is never easy, if at all possible. Indeed, architects are rarely—if ever!—completely conscious of how they arrive at their design solutions. Looking at the above stair-focused design, one might sense an echo of the ziggurat forms of the stepped pyramids of ancient Egypt or Mexico—but the designs could just as well have derived from other sources, like the kind of rectilinear structure of the below quartz titanium crystal.

This example of a natural quartz crystal rainbow titanium cluster presents an intruding set of rectilinear geometries.

Nature’s crystals—or inspiration for stairs?

YOU CAN HELP SAVE BURROUGHS WELLCOME !

Image courtesy of Joseph W. Molitor architectural photographs. Located in Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives

The Burroughs Wellcome building is threated with imminent demolition.

It’s loss would be a disaster—a titanic waste of our nation’s cultural heritage. Remember:

When a great building is destroyed, there are no second chances.

NOW— THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO:

• Sign the petition to save Burroughs Wellcome— Please sign it here.

• We can keep you up-to-date with bulletins about the latest developments. To get them, please join our foundation’s mailing list: you’ll get all the updates, (as well as other Rudolphian news.)—you can sign-up at the bottom of this page.

Rudolph at work: Architect—and master of geometry.

Burroughs Wellcome: Site of Historic Protest

An historic protest took place at the Burroughs Wellcome building in 1989, over the issue of the cost of the vital AIDS drug, AZT. The protestors barricaded themselves in the building and, after being evicted, the chained protestors were led away by local police. This was posted by one of the ACT UP activists who helped plan and participate the demonstration: Peter Staley (seen at right).

WHY WE cARE ABOUT—AND PRESERVE—BUILDINGS

We can celebrate a work of architecture for many reasons: the place it has in a community’s heart, the quality of its design, the splendid fitness of a building in relation to its setting, the way it exemplifies a designer’s finest work, and the key place it stands in an architect’s oeuvre.

All the above would apply to Paul Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome building. Indeed the building has received many accolades from users and architectural critics, and architectural historians—including this assessment from A Field Guide to Landmarks of Modern Architecture in the United States by Miriam F. Stimpson:

“The building is one of its kind in the nation.”

BUILDINGS AND HISTORY

The above image of the arrested protestors shows, in the background, a portion of the Burroughs Wellcome building from which they had just emerged. Here’s the same elevation, as shot by the distinguished architectural photographer G. E. Kidder Smith. Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But another reason—one that looms large, when deciding for the preservation of a building—is its importance as a site of historic events. Here, Burroughs Wellcome’s research and corporate headquarters building, in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, has at least two solidly strong points in its favor:

• Burroughs Wellcome was the site of Nobel Prize-winning work by Gertrude Elion and Walter Hutchings—research that led to the introduction of numerous life-saving medicines—including AZT, the first effective medication for the treatment of HIV.

• In the midst of the AIDS crisis, it was the site of a key protest about AZT. This was not only important for the immediate issue involved (pricing and availablity, and the related accusation of price-gouging monopoly). It was also historic for the way it showed that a giant corporation (a significant player in “Big Pharma”) could get ‘push-back’—and have their policies affected in positive ways.

1989: A DECISIVE MOMENT FOR (AND AT) BURROUGHS WELLCOME

“Silence = Death” poster, designed by the Silence = Death Project, a six-person NYC-based collective. Starting in the late 1980’s, this image was used by (and often identified with) ACT UP, in their fight against AIDS. Image courtesy of Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom

THE PROTAGONISTS: ACT UP

ACT UP (the "AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power”) was first formed in 1987. It is a grassroots political group, organized as local chapters, that has been working to address the AIDS crisis. The group works through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy, and working to change legislation and public policies—and their their current official statement asserts:

OUR MISSION:

ACT UP — the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power — is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals, united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis. We meet with government officials, we distribute the latest medical information, we protest and demonstrate. We are not silent.

ACT UP was formed in response to social neglect, government negligence and the complacency of the medical establishment during the 1980s. Soon it found itself needing to fight corporate greed, lack of solidarity and various forms of stigma and discrimination at home and abroad.

While ACT UP has an incredible history, HIV/AIDS is not history. HIV/AIDS is very much with us. And we call on you to join our fight to end AIDS.

ACT UP FIGHTS FOR:

Sustained investment in research for new medicines and treatments for HIV/AIDS and related co-infections;

Equitable access to prevention and care for HIV/AIDS and healthcare, in general;

Tackling the structural drivers of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, such as stigma, discrimination and poverty.

ACT UP became famous for their “actions” —well-planned demonstrations and provocative protests, at key locations, which would get the most attention on the issues for which they campaigned. Early in ACT UP’s history, Burroughs Wellcome would become an entity upon which they strongly focused.

The Nobel Prize medal. Awarded to Elion and Hitchings—including for work they did while at the Paul Rudolph-designed Burroughs Wellcome building in North Carolina. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

THE PROTAGONSTS: BURROUGHS WELLCOME

A giant (and innovator) in the pharmaceutical industry, it was founded in London in 1880 by Sir Henry Wellcome (1853-1936) with his colleague Silas Burroughs (1846-1895). Some important aspects of their history include:

• Wellcome set up several research laboratories, and employed some of the most outstanding scientists of the day. 

• They spread the use and selling of medicine in tablet form—previously, medicines had been sold mostly as powders or liquids.

• In the 1920s Burroughs Wellcome established research and manufacturing facilities in Tuckahoe, New York—which served as the US headquarters until the company moved to Research Triangle Park in North Carolina in 1971.

• Nobel Prize-winning scientists Elion and Hitchings worked there and invented drugs still used many years later, including treatments for leukemia, gout, viral infections, and organ transplant rejection.

• In 1984, Burroughs Wellcome scientist Marty St. Clair was at the forefront of developing the first treatment for HIV - AZT, which was approved in 1987 - utilizing the methods pioneered by Elion and Hitchings.

• Burroughs Wellcome introduced a new treatment for cold and flu symptoms, Sudafed, followed by Actifed, both of which became popular consumer brands.

• Glaxo and Wellcome merged in 1995, to form Glaxo Wellcome. Burroughs Wellcome was one of the four large entities that eventually merged to form GlaxoSmithKline.

AZT was the first medication shown to be effective against HIV. Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons

THE ISSUE: AZT PRICING AND AVAILABLITY

We’ll let one of ACT UP’s most well-known activists, Peter Staley, tell what was at issue. In an interview with TIME reporter Maia Szalavitz, she asked him:

Q: You’ve had a complicated relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, and you never shied away from working with them or attacking them. How did you manage not avoid becoming shills who took their money or outsiders who never got heard?
A: The quick answer is Burroughs Wellcome [the company that made AZT, the first AIDS drug]. AZT and Act-Up were born in same month. When they announced the $10,000 [annual] price for the drug, [it] shocked not only us but the New York Times. At the time, it was the highest price of any drug in history.

THE DEMONSTRATION AT BURROUGHS WELLCOME

Screen capture of the web page with the Time article which has an interview with Peter Staley. The image shows Staley being arrested at another ACT UP protest.

Peter Staley continues:

That quickly became one of the planks in Act-Up’s first demonstration. It was a persistent fight against [the company] to lower the price. In 1989, Mark Harrington [a fellow Act-Up member] and I decided to up the pressure on that campaign because [AZT] was in wider and wider use. So we requested a meeting, they granted it, and we met with the father of AZT, Dr. David Barry. He was head of research at Burroughs Wellcome and he was one those guys who is too brilliant for his own good and looked down on everybody. Mark and I went to their headquarters and laid out our case why the price was unjustified and he pushed back very hard.

The whole time I was scoping out their headquarters and figuring out how we can get in. It was down in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. They ignored us, so we did an invasion of their headquarters a few months later. It was a shot across the bow of their corporate culture. I was very aware of how corporations try to make employees happy to work there; I had been part of the team at JP Morgan. It’s very important to corporations. So I wanted to make everyone at Burroughs Wellcome feel guilty about working there. I think we accomplished it that day.

In an oral history interview, Staley gives further details:

Blaine Mosley, James McGrath, there were about 7 of us, and we even had our own media spokesperson who didn’t go inside, who had a coat and tie on, and we got past security and used high – we were called the power drill team because we had those battery-operated power drills and we sealed ourselves in with screws into this office after convincing a woman to evacuate. And, all over the local news down there, and very sympathetic news coverage. It was a story where the whole country was on our side from the beginning. Everybody was offended by the $10,000 a year.

Or as ACT UP’s chronology described it:

On April 25, 1989, Staley and three other activists barricaded themselves in an office at Burroughs Wellcome in Research Triangle Park, NC, to protest the price of AZT (at the time priced at $8,000-$10,000 per year). The four protesters used power tools to bolt metal plates to the door of an unoccupied office and had planned to drop a banner that would be visible from the nearby highway, Interstate 40, before authorities cut their way through a wall. The protestors then chained themselves together, and were cut apart and charged with trespassing and property damage.

MEDIA COVERAGE AT BURROUGHS WELLCOME

The demonstration was covered, both in-print and videoed—and a key point was offered by a spokesperson for ACT UP:

“We’re not denying that they deserve a profit, but we say it should be a reasonable profit on a drug that people need to stay alive.” —Dan Baker, ACT UP

A film., “The Plague: (History of AIDS)” is an Emmy-nominated documentary by Jenny Barraclough. It includes vintage footage taken at several ACT UP events—and in it (at about 33:53) you can see the four Burroughs Wellcome protestors. They have been arrested and are being led away—with the Burroughs Wellcome building in the background. They are allowed to stop for Peter Staley to make a statement to a reporter.

Coverage of the protest at Burroughs Wellcome included this article in the Dispatch newspaper of Lexington, North Carolina. The four protestors are shown after their arrest, giving a press conference.

THE FOLLOW-UP DEMONSTRATION AT THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE

Staley tells what came next:

We started getting inside intelligence from employees telling us [what was going on] — because gays are everywhere — and we said, ‘This is only Round One. Lower the price or we’ll escalate.’ The whole industry was watching and were horrified. It wasn’t until a major study came out showing that AZT not only helped the sickest but those [who were not yet that ill] and the government recommended that more people be put on it and the stock price shot up, that we said, O.K., let’s do a stock exchange action.

And the New York Times editorialized against [Burroughs Wellcome], and there were Congressional hearings. Forty-eight hours after [the demonstration], they buckled and lowered the price by 20%. From then on, the industry said it’s probably smarter to try to talk to [activists] and placate them as much as we can.

In an oral history interview, Staley gives full (and exciting) details of the careful planning of the demonstration—and what actually happened:

Included in ACT UP’s tactics were publicity—as in the form of the above poster—urging boycotting of Burroughs Wellcome products.

It was a story where the whole country was on our side from the beginning. Everybody was offended by the $10,000 a year.

So, it, but it really, and again they ignored us. But it really got full steam going in August of ’88 when the government released new data on AZT showing that it helped people with, not only with full-blown AIDS, but it also looked helpful with people with AIDS-related complex. And, everybody said okay, well the market’s going to expand for this drug. T&D [ACT UP’s Treatment & Data committee] started working in coalition with mainstream AIDS organizations.

In a series of conference calls, and this was with GMHC and Lambda Legal Defense and AIDS Action Council in Washington, and AmFar. And we were all trying to work on multi-pronged ways to pressure them. AIDS Action Council was looking at pushing for congressional hearings with Kennedy, etcetera, and Waxman. In fact there were congressional hearings to bring in the executives of Burroughs Wellcome to explain the $10,000 price. And there was media being generated with New York Times editorials and so it was actually great coalition work. ACT UP was almost took all the credit for the price decrease, but it was actually wonderful diverse coalition work that ACT UP didn’t do a lot of it that time, but that happened, and that was happening. It was actually very cool.

So the company was feeling it from all sides and it was just snowballing. And the Stock Exchange action itself was just kind of the last push. They were under just tremendous public pressure by the time the Stock Exchange action happened. So it was kind of the last push that just pushed them over the edge.

And ACT UP, we actually met with them in coalition with all these groups at a hotel outside their headquarters, ’cause they wouldn’t let me near their headquarters in Raleigh-Durham about two weeks beforehand. And we told their PR people that the Stock Exchange action was going to happen. Not the one inside, but the one outside and that if they wanted us to cancel the action they had between now and then to lower the price and just constant trying to make this happen. And again that meeting was a complete stonewalling - just like the David Berry meeting earlier in the year.

And we had a member of ACT UP who actually worked as a trader on the New York Stock Exchange who was able to tell us how lax the security actually was. And there was this door that you could use to get into the Stock Exchange, one of the, there are various doors you could go through. But one of them is right under the columns that you see of the famous picture of the Stock Exchange. So, it faces Broad Street, where the columns are and right behind those columns is that big floor you see on the news. So, that door is literally, you go into it and then there’s three steps to your left, a little landing and another three steps up and you’re on that floor. It’s that close to the street. And there’s no traffic on that street anymore ’cause a bomb would really do a job on the New York Stock Exchange just from the street. So, and there was just one security guard there with no metal detectors. That’s all there was for the entire Stock Exchange.

So he told us about that door and I started quietly putting together a crew. Many had done the [Burroughs Wellcome] action earlier down in North Carolina. I had Gregg Bordowitz and, I’m trying to remember. We had James McGrath again, much of the same crew that I had before and there were seven of us. Robert Hilferty was one of the photographers, ’cause we needed to record the action without telling the press in advance. So we had to take our own pictures. And, what we did is, we needed to get those white trading badges. So, a couple of weeks beforehand we acted like tourists and we had video cameras. And we stood outside the Stock Exchange, acting like tourists during lunch when many of the traders are standing outside smoking and what have you. And we would zoom down and actually zoomed in on one of these trading badges. And then drew one up based on that design and took it to this kind of pawn shop in Greenwich Village that makes badges and things. And we told, we gave the guy a whole story that we were doing a skit for a holiday party or something like that, and we needed these badges for the skit we were doing. And they’re just these white plastic tags that had those big num-, the traders’ numbers on them with the name of the firm underneath and a black line through the middle – thick plastic rectangular things. They all had photo IDs, but our contact on the floor told us that nobody, everybody kept those in their wallets. Nobody had to show them to get in. It was just kind of a visual look. If you had the white badge, that’s all you needed. So, we had these badges made, very cheaply.

They looked great and we had to do a test run to make sure it worked. So, me and two others from the group – Robert Hilferty and one other, the Tuesday before the action, which was on a Thursday, we went in with the opening bell, the rush before the opening bell. It opens at 9:30 and there are a bunch of traders that stand outside that door smoking their last cigarette. So, at 9:25 we stood around with them in trader drag, with a tie and shirts and our badges, pretending to be traders, and we walked in with them in the rush, to see if that would work. And, the security guard didn’t bat an eye and all of a sudden we were on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

And, I wanted to figure out where we would do the demonstration. So we’re walking around, the bell is ringing, trading is starting, everybody is busy, we actually pull out little pads of paper because that’s what people seem to carry around. (laughs) So, we’re looking like traders, and we discovered this old VIP balcony that wasn’t used anymore, that had a steep little staircase, an old wooden balcony. And it was perfect because it had a big NYSE banner hanging over it, which would be a great backdrop for the photo. And, there was no gate in front of it. It was unused so we didn’t have to push anybody aside, or have anybody wrestle with us once we got up there and I said – this is great, and you guys’ll just stand on the floor we’ll give you, we’ll have two cameras – in case one of the shots doesn’t work, two photographers – high ASA film so that flashes don’t go off, or anything like that. And we’ll chain ourselves up there and do our routine. But then I got stopped on the trading floor. This guy comes up to me, this old guy and says, “hey – you’re new!” And, I’m like, “ah, yeah!” I start to sweat. And, he says, “Bear Stearns.” I said, “yeah, yeah.” ’Cause all of our badges said “Bear Stearns.” We just picked a firm out of a hat. And he said, “that’s weird – 3,865” – my number was 3,000-something. He said, “the highest number on the floor is 1600, there are only 1600 traders here.” (laughs) And I said, “I don’t know. This is the one they gave me.” (laughing) And I’m starting to sweat more and he goes, “well, I guess so, I guess they’re trying a new system, well, welcome.” And he shook my hand and that was it, he walked away, and I was like – holy shit! So we went back to the pawnshop and said – you got to make all new badges. We had like 48 hours before the demo was happening, so.

And we all met at a McDonald’s beforehand that morning on Nassau Street, nervous as all hell. And seven of us, five that would go up to the balcony, two photographers, and, the photographers were supposed to take our picture and get out right away, outside, and hand the cameras over to the runners that would take them up to Associated Press. And, we had, each of us had stuff under our t-shirts. One person had a huge banner that was all folded up. He looked a little fat. I had a gigantic chain wrapped in a fanny belt that we’d chain ourselves to the banister at the top of this thing, so it would take them a while for, to pull us off the balcony. We all had handcuffs in our pockets. We all had little marine foghorns that were ear-piercing and that’s how we would announce our presence. And then we had these, in honor of Abbie Hoffman who was the first and only person to ever organize an action on the Stock Exchange at what was then the visitor’s gallery, which is now walled off because of Abbie Hoffman, with glass. He threw down fake, he threw down dollar bills onto the floor of the Stock Exchange, real dollar bills as a rant against how capitalism was funding the [Vietnam] war. We did something in honor of him, we had fake $100 bills made up that had, on the back of them. . . .

So, we all piled in at 9:25, walking right past security and the five of us walked up the stairs of the balcony and pulled everything, knelt down and pulled everything out from under our shirts and we waited for the bell and chained our, put the chain around the banister all handcuffed ourselves to it, got the whole banner unrolled which said “Sell Wellcome”. And, at 9:29 and 50 seconds we jumped up and put the banner over and all let off the foghorns, you couldn’t hear the opening bell, and it was extraordinary. The place just, for a second, just went dead quiet except for the foghorns as everybody tried to figure out what was happening. And they then started going into a rage as they realized what was happening. And the photographers took their pictures quietly and got out, handed the cameras off, but they saw that the crowd had started getting really, they were beginning to throw wads of paper at us and getting very angry and they were concerned, so they foolishly went back in and they quickly got nabbed. The traders were looking around for conspirators and they got real roughed up, shirt collars were ripped and stuff like that. And these guys were just raging at us, and I used to work with that testosterone and it was, ah, it was really one of the most gratifying moments of my life, ’cause I realized it was done. It was, we had succeeded, we got through security, it was done. The picture was taken, this was a gigantic news story. And they could scream all they wanted but we were going to be on the front page of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal the next day.

Question: Did their [Burroughs Wellcome’s] share price go down?

A little bit, a little bit. That wasn’t the goal. It was just to really keep this as a major story. And it was, the next day. And three days later they lowered the price by 20 percent. Which was the first, and unfortunately the last time an HIV drug has had its price lowered in the US. But, fortunately we’ve seen very dramatic price declines in the developing world.

But, it became a real, it became a real kind of “don’t cross this line” type thing, so the savings were way beyond just AZT.

And the ACT UP chronology records it this way:

On September 14, 1989, Staley and six other activists staged another demonstration to protest the rising cost of AZT, this time in the New York Stock Exchange. Dressed in suits and carrying fake credentials, they chained themselves to a balcony above the trading floor before unfurling a banner that read "Sell Wellcome", drowned out the opening bell with airhorns, and dropped fake $100 bills. . . . We die while you play business." on the traders below. Within days, Burroughs Wellcome lowered the price of AZT by 20%.

MEDIA COVERAGE AT THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE

Shutting down the NYSE is NEWS—and this demonstration was even more widely covered, both in the mainstream and community media.

ACT UP activists, arrested and being led out after a protest at the New York Stock Exchange.

Outweek, published from 1989-to-1991, was a prominent news magazine for the LGBT community. This site makes available a full archive of their entire run of issues—and includes articles on ACT UP protests, like the one at the New York Stock exchange, shown below.

OUTWEEK, a NYC-based newsmagazine serving the LGBT community, gave continuous coverage to all issues relating to the AIDS crisis. That included AIDS-related medical developments, political tumult, effects on behavior and culture—and the the numerous activities and protests (“actions”) by ACT UP, like the one at the New York Stock Exchange. Their article (below) includes photos of the protest, from both inside and outside the NYSE building. The lower-left image shows the banner which the ACT UP protestors secretly brought into the building and unfurled within. Their actions shocked of all the traders, and shut down the exchange.

EFFECTS OF THE BURROUGHS WELLCOME DEMONSTRATIONS

Victor Zonana, in a July 1, 1992 article in the Los Angeles Times, describes additional follow-up effects of these Burroughs Wellcome demonstrations:

In a symbolic rapprochement between AIDS activists and the pharmaceutical industry, Burroughs Wellcome Co. kicked off a fund-raising drive for AIDS research Tuesday by donating $1 million to a campaign originated by the activist organization ACT UP.

The donation, the largest cash gift by a pharmaceutical company to an AIDS research organization, will be administered by the community-based clinical trials program of the American Foundation for AIDS Research. It will result in a nearly 50% increase in AmFAR’s grants for community-based drug research.

The Burroughs gift is the first step in an ACT UP campaign to tap the industry for $5 million in annual contributions to community-based research. . . .

While $1 million may not be a huge sum for Burroughs--the company sold $1.6 billion worth of products, including $182 million of AZT, in the first six months of its current fiscal year--AmFAR officials said the contribution is significant for the hard-pressed AIDS research effort, which is facing cutbacks at the federal level.

AmFAR, which will administer the funds to be generated by the ACT UP initiative, made $2.2 million in grants to its network of community-based trial centers last year, said Paul Corser, the program’s director.

Staley, a former Wall Street bond trader who is on disability leave because of his own HIV infection, was the driving force in bringing ACT UP and Burroughs together. He is a member of AmFAR’s board of directors and called community-based research “an important alternative to our government’s clinical research program.”

“With their donations,” Staley added, “the industry will help build an invaluable network of research sites through which promising AIDS treatments can be tested.”.

ACT UP has contacted 50 companies and asked them to contribute a total of $5 million to the new program by Sept. 1. “We approached Burroughs Wellcome and asked them to respond early to kick off the campaign in a public way,” Staley said.

Although a small faction within ACT UP was against the joint press conference, arguing that Burroughs was using the gift to garner a public relations bonanza, Staley said he had no reservations.

“The federal research effort is not working,” he said. “We’ll take help wherever we can get it. This is a desperate situation.”

But other pharmaceutical companies shouldn’t draw comfort from ACT UP’s truce with Burroughs, he said.

“The activist community continues to have issues with the pharmaceutical industry, and when push comes to shove, we will continue to raise them as we have in the past,” Staley said, adding that the Burroughs gift vindicates activists “who believe we should use many different tools and approaches to achieve our ends.”\

KEEPING HISTORY ALIVE bY SAVING ARCHIVES, DOING RESEARCH—aND PRESEVING HISTORIC BUILDINGS

The protest at the Burroughs Wellcome building was a moment of historic import—for it showed that one of the pharmaceutical world’s most powerful companies could be challenged—and that their actions could be affected.

Burroughs Wellcome, AZT, drug pricing, and the controversy surrounding them, has even been the subject of academic research, as in this paper from Harvard.

How does one keep the memory of such important events alive—and ongoingly accessible for study (and inspiration!) That’s a question which occupies the thoughts of activists, historians, and the stewards of each community’s identity and history. Some of the answers include:

The Burroughs Wellcome building, designed by Paul Rudolph—and site of the historic 1989 protest over the pricing of the AIDS drug, AZT. Image courtesy of Joseph W. Molitor architectural photographs. Located in Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives

ARCHIVES: From nearly its beginning, some members of ACT UP realized that they were engaged in events (and a life-or-death struggle) of historic importance—and so, from early on, efforts were made to record and archive its actions and development. Collections were made from the tidal wave of paper (leaflets, posters, reports, minutes, newsletters…) that were generated, and much of this material made it into the prime ACT UP archive (now held within the archives division of the New York Public Library.) Later, an extensive program of oral history interviews were conducted.

RESEARCH: The movement has been the subject of much academic research and publishing—even including a focused examination of the actions directed at Burroughs Wellcome—as at least one paper from the Harvard Business School shows.

FILM AND VIDEO: Filmmakers and videographers of all kinds have recorded and synthesized this era. A superb example is David France’s documentary, How To Survive A Plague—which was nominated for an Academy Award.

BUILDING PRESERVATION: Yes, archives, academia, and moving pictures are important—but there’s nothing as real, as vital, as vividly authentic as the actual sites where history happened. Preservation of the actual buildings and landscapes where history was made should be a priority for all those who care about heritage and culture. Burroughs Wellcome is not only distinguished as one of America’s finest examples of Modern architecture, but it is also an historic site where a key moment took place in the life-and-death struggle of AIDS activism. It must be preserved.

And when Peter Staley himself commented on Burroughs Wellcome’s headquarters, he said:

“Loved This Building.”

David France, the film’s director and co-writer, also came out with a book version, which goes into the issues and history of the first decade-and-a-half of the AIDS crisis—and does so in profound depth.

The evolution of ACT UP—as an organization and community fighting AIDS—is shown in the Academy Award-nominated documentary, “How To Survive A Plague.” Directed by author-journalist-filmmaker, David France, the film uses archival footage, news reports, and interviews to capture the struggle to create effective responses to the AIDS crisis—and their interaction with the development and marketing of drugs such as AZT.

YOU CAN HELP SAVE BURROUGHS WELLCOME !

The Burroughs Wellcome building is threated with imminent demolition.

It’s loss would be a disaster—a titanic waste of our nation’s cultural heritage.

When a great building is destroyed, there are no second chances.

NOW— THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO:

• Sign the petition to save Burroughs Wellcome. You can sign it here.

• We’ll send you bulletins about the latest developments. To get them, please join our foundation’s mailing list: you’ll get all the updates, (as well as other Rudolphian news.)—you can sign up at the bottom of this page.

The famous Paul Rudolph-designed lobby of the Burroughs Wellcome building, in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The protestors would have been through this central space. Image courtesy of Joseph W. Molitor architectural photographs. Located in Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives

The Burroughs Wellcome Building: Incubator of Nobel Prize-Winning Research— and Cures

The Nobel Prize—the world’s most distinguished form of recognition. Show here is the Nobel medal, awarded to each recipient. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

ULTIMATE ACHIEVEMENT

Can buildings make a difference for the people who live and work in them? The power of design is an article of faith for architects, but the ultimate verification comes from the evidence presented by the users—individuals who actually inhabit their designs. Here’s testimony from one who worked at at Paul Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome building:

I spent 32 years with [Burroughs Wellcome]. . . .and helped work on the layout of the labs to fit the 22.5 degree sloping walls of bright orange and blue. At that time, if any space was conceived to bring out the creative, inspirational, thoughts—this was it, in my opinion. I loved working there. We invented and developed more pharmaceutical products in those years. . . .We were “family” but more to the point we were colleagues who were allowed to trust the expertise of each other.

Even more convincing evidence of the positive environment of the building is the work which emerged from Burroughs Wellcome: the scientific research, and the products which were the practical application of that research. When that research saves, ultimately, many millions of lives, there could be no finer acknowledgement of great human and scientific accomplishment—but when the creators of that work is then recognized by the world’s most distinguished judges, one has risen to a level few ever achieve.

That is what happened with the work of Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings. It was for their work over decades (and particularly the work done while they were at the Burroughs Wellcome building in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park) that they became Nobel Prize laureates in Medicine in 1988.

“Wellcome News” was the journal of the Burroughs Wellcome company. This is the cover of their “Special Nobel Prize Issue” from 1988, showing the prize-winning scientists, Elion and Hitchings (who had done much of their research within the Rudolph-designed building in Research Triangle Park.) A close viewing of the photo will reveal Burroughs Wellcome’s famous unicorn logo on Dr. Elion’s lab coat. Image courtesy of: Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0)

THE NOBEL PRIZE

Here are excerpts from the official announcement of Elion’s and Hitchings’ prize:

The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute has today decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1988 jointly to Sir James W. Black, Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings.

The discoveries awarded with this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine concern important principles in drug treatment, principles that have resulted in the development of a series of new drugs.. . .

The discoveries awarded with this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine concern the development of new drugs which have become essential in the treatment of a number of different disorders, mainly myocardial ischemia (angina pectoris), hypertension, gastroduodenal ulcer, leukemia, gout and infectious diseases. However, the research work carried out by Black, Elion and Hitchings has had a more fundamental significance. While drug development had earlier mainly been built on chemical modification of natural products they introduced a more rational approach based on the understanding of basic biochemical and physiological processes.

. . . .An even more recent application of these ideas is the development of azidothymidine (AZT) which was described in 1985 by other scientists from the same institute, and which is the hitherto best documented drug in the treatment of AIDS. It can be added that trimethoprim-sulfa is used in the treatment of Pneumocystis carinii, a relatively common complication to AIDS.

The official Nobel Prize website features an article on Gertrude Elion, citing her as an example of Women Who Changed Science. It includes numerous images from her life, including her time working at Burroughs Wellcome. This scan from the web page shows Elion and Hitchings, together in front of a 1976 addition to the building,, also designed by Paul Rudolph

Nobel Prize winners, Dr. Gertrude Elion (left) and Dr. George Hitchings (right) worked together for several decades, before being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988 for their research. Here, they are photographed working in their laboratory, circa 1948. Photograph courtesy of GlaxoSmithKline plc., GSK Heritage Archives, via Wikimedia

The Burroughs Wellcome building was renamed the Elion-Hitchings Building in 1988, honoring Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings. It’s worth speaking of their careers and research—including the era when they were working at the Burroughs Wellcome building in Research Triangle Park.

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Gertrude Elion, photographed in 1983. Image courtesy of GlaxoSmithKline plc., GSK Heritage Archives, via Wikimedia

GERTRUDE ELION

(1918-1999) From 1967 to 1983, Elion was the Head of the Department of Experimental Therapy for Burroughs Wellcome. She officially retired in 1983—but even after her retirement from Burroughs Wellcome, she continued almost full-time work at the lab. She played a significant role in the development of AZT, one of the first drugs used to treat HIV and AIDS.

Rather than relying on trial-and-error, Elion and Hitchings discovered new drugs using rational drug design, which used the differences in biochemistry and metabolism between normal human cells and  pathogens (disease-causing agents such as cancer cells, protozoa, bacteria, and viruses) to design drugs that could kill or inhibit the reproduction of particular pathogens without harming human cells. The drugs they developed are used to treat a variety of maladies, such as leukemia, malaria, lupus, hepatitis, arthritis, gout, and organ transplant rejection.

Elion was Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology and of Experimental Medicine from 1971 to 1983, and Research Professor at Duke University from 1983 to 1999. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1990, a member of the Institute of Medicine in 1991, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences also in 1991.

Nobel Prize winner Dr. George Hitchings. Image courtesy of Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom., via Wikimedia

gEORGE HITCHINGS

(1905-1998) In 1942, Hitchings went to work for Wellcome Research Laboratories at in their Tuckahoe laboratory (their US research center, before it was moved to North Carolina). There, he began working with Gertrude Elion in 1944. Drugs Hitchings' team worked on included 2,6-diaminopurine (a compound to treat leukemia) and p-chlorophenoxy-2,4-diaminopyrimidine (a folic acid antagonist). According to his Nobel Prize autobiography,

The line of inquiry we had begun in the 1940s [also] yielded new drug therapies for malaria (pyrimethamine), leukemia (6-mercaptopurine and thioguanine), gout (allopurinol), organ transplantation (azathioprine) and bacterial infections (co-trimoxazole (trimethoprim A)). The new knowledge contributed by our studies pointed the way for investigations that led to major antiviral drugs. . [including for] AIDS (zidovudine).

In 1967 Hitchings became Vice President in Charge of Research of Burroughs-Wellcome. He became Scientist Emeritus in 1976. He also served as Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology and of Experimental Medicine from 1970 to 1985 at Duke University.

The ground breaking ceremony for the Burroughs Wellcome building. Both the architect—Paul Rudolph, at far right)—and one of the firm’s most distinguished scientists—Dr. Hitchings, standing next to him—are participants at the occasion. Credit: Wellcome News, Summer/Fall 1969 Issue. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Dr. Hitchings (left) and Dr. Elion (right), 1988, the year they received the Nobel Prize. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia.

YOU CAN HELP SAVE BURROUGHS WELLCOME !

The Burroughs Wellcome building is threated with imminent demolition.

It’s loss would be a disaster—a titanic waste of our nation’s cultural heritage.

When a great building is destroyed, there are no second chances.

NOW— THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO:

• Sign the petition to save Burroughs Wellcome. You can sign it here.

• We’ll send you bulletins about the latest developments. To get them, please join our foundation’s mailing list: you’ll get all the updates, (as well as other Rudolphian news.)—you can sign up at the bottom of this page.

The Burroughs Wellcome building, designed by Paul Rudolph—the site of Nobel Prize-winning, and life-saving research. Image courtesy of Joseph W. Molitor architectural photographs. Located in Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives

Burroughs Wellcome: Let the CRITICS & USERS speak!

Entry court of the Burroughs Wellcome building. Image courtesy of Joseph W. Molitor architectural photographs. Located in Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives

NOW IT’S THE CRITICS’ & USERS’ TURN TO SPEAK…

In a recent post, we shared the various views, assessments, and judgements, made by several architectural historians, of the Burroughs Wellcome building. Historians have several roles, and one of the main thrusts of their work is to take “the long view”—striving to show how any one building can be understood within broader context of the architect’s overall career (and the architectural culture of the time). But there are other viewpoints which call for our attention:

• Critics have a different role. Yes, architectural journalists/critics/bloggers also seek to share deeper understandings of a work of architecture. But their writings are usually more of-the-moment—a result of their immediate interaction with building (and of news about it.)

• Users are the ultimate critics. The actual occupants of the building (those who lived or worked there, day-after-day—but also including visitors) have an intimacy with the architecture which cannot be exceeded. Their voices must be heard.

Here, we present the examples of architectural criticism/journalism from the era when the Burroughs Wellcome’s design was first presented (and the building finished), as well as more recent thoughts by members of the architectural-critical community. The last example, below, includes copious comments from people who worked for Burroughs Wellcome—those who had an ongoing experience of the building, and warm memories of being there.

PAUL RUDOLPH: WORK IN PROGRESS

Architectural Record, November, 1970

This article, by Architectural Record’s distinguished editor-writer Mildred Schmertz, showcased three new projects by Rudolph: a large central library, to be built in Niagara Falls (and the article leads off with his tour de force isometric drawing of the building, shown at right); a housing development which was partially built in Buffalo (“Shoreline”); and the Burroughs Wellcome building. The article begins with an articulate assessment of Rudolph’s design concerns & commitments—and then it provides text about each project. Below are excerpts from both sections.

It has been said before that Rudolph's superb drawings so enchant the eye that one is diverted from the designs themselves into contemplation of the wonders of his draftsmanship. To counteract this tendency, it may be useful to set forth those attributes of his work which form its essential design content and which Rudolph himself considers most characteristic.

For him the site is a key consideration. His design is a response to the site and its environment. Where a strong environmental ambiance exists, he reinforces it. Where it does not, he creates it.

His concern with the environmental aspects of design leads him to freshly restate the design problem each time, and causes him to utilize a great variety of forms, scales and materials. His buildings are designed to be read from varying distances and from the air. Buildings are often dramatically articulated from story to story. Clearly expressed and essentially simple structural systems are juxtaposed to specific elements such as stairs, elevators and mechanical and toilet shafts which have been elaborated as forms. ln general, fixed elements are juxtaposed to more flexible generalized uses. The fixed elements often play a dual role acting as "hinges" and "joints" as his buildings sinuously move to follow a street pattern, turn a corner or form a plaza. Frequently these elements are used to lead the eye around the building. Such elements are essential means by which Rudolph manipulates scale. They take many shapes, thus a small conference room might be circular, elliptical, square, a rectangle or a triangle. Often the choice of shape becomes a highly personal one and leads to qualities which Rudolph realizes are easily misinterpreted as arbitrary.

Rudolph designs buildings which simultaneously defer to the past, yet accommodate the future. He creates definable exterior spaces which relate to existing buildings which are to remain, but he indicates the future by open-ended concepts, infinitely expansible in every direction. His buildings always embody broader design concerns than those represented by the building itself. They are conceived as interventions in behalf of tomorrow—the walls, gates, landmark towers and bridges of a higher urban order to come. Rudolph's interiors are characterized by the flow of space-horizontally, vertically and diagonally. Again his primary principle is one of juxtaposition—agitated space is opposed to quiet, contented space, tight coves of space flow into multistoried central space, diagonal space passes through vertical space. The control of natural light within the interior is a major concern of Rudolph's. ln most cases it is indirect, admitted by almost invisible skylights and reflected from broad sloping planes.

A final characteristic by which Rudolph's work may be readily recognized is his use of space modules as integral elements forming the building complex. . . . Those projects by Rudolph in which space modules are clearly articulated, although not totally prefabricated, can be considered prototypes being developed to hasten the arrival of this technological advance.

Burroughs Wellcome

This building may be considered a summation of the characteristics by which Rudolph's architecture may be identified. The site has been a key consideration and the building is essentially topographical, single stories are clearly articulated to define scale, specific elements are elaborated within a clear and regular structural system, the plan is infinitely expansible in each of its three major blocks, and great attention has been paid to the flow of interior space as well as to the handling of reflected light. The building, although it doesn't actually consist of totally prefabricated space modules inserted within a structural frame, almost looks as though it does, and thus it prefigures and helps lay the groundwork for future technological development.

SCULPTURAL FORMS FOR PHARMECEUTICAL RESEARCH

Architectural Record, June, 1972

This cover story was the major presentation of the finished building in US architectural journals. Below are excerpts from the unsigned article: these were chosen because they focused on the critic’s/journalist’s assessment of the design.

Springing in inclined forms from the summit of a long ridge in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, the laboratory and corporate headquarters of the Burroughs Wellcome Co. is marked by the sculptural invention that has long made Paul Rudolph's work so arresting. It is also filled with the characteristic complexities that make his work, in some quarters, controversial.

The client wanted a building that was shaped to his needs but remained architecturally distinctive-a building that would leave a forceful after-image in the minds of all who see it. Rudolph wanted the building to be a man-made extension of the ridge. He also wanted an opportunity to explore the variety of spatial relationships that diagonal framing could produce.

With only minor reservations, both owner and architect are well pleased with the final product.

Flexibility was a primary programmatic goal. Each major area in Rudolph's plan-laboratories, administration and support services-can be expanded by simple, linear addition. To prepare for this eventuality, the architect left the expansible ends of the building expressed in a somewhat random pattern of flattened hexagons. Any of the elements can be extended horizontally without disturbing the building's visual order. This device, combined with an elaborate articulation of parts, complicates the elevations considerably but gives the building an agreeable scale and plunges it squarely into the realm of dynamic architectural sculpture. The complications of the exterior assert themselves inside with no less force. The three-story lobby space closes dramatically overhead in a turbulent and visually compelling spatial composition. The administrative offices are shaped at the exterior wall to receive skylights that admit daylight from an unseen and unexpected source. The board room, over the cafeteria, opens out through a canted window wall to one of the fairest scenes in North Carolina: a timbered Piedmont plain with the spires of Chapel Hill in the distance.

The spaces are particularized and personal; as much the opposite of universal space as Rudolph could make them. A simple and consistent vocabulary of finishes gives the administrative areas an easy continuity and flow.

The Burroughs Wellcome building is not for those who are disturbed by departures from the norm. The sharp-eyed visitor may find details that are not completely resolved. But if there is bravura here, it is more than balanced by solid accomplishment. The building is functional—probably no more and no less so than similar facilities of more routine design. What is best about Burroughs Wellcome is the sense of exhilaration and spatial excitement it awakens. That it achieves so much of each is a tribute to both architect and owner.

PAUL RUDOLPH’S BURROUGHS WELLCOME HEADQUARTERS BUILDING IN NORTH CAROLINA THREATENED WITH DEMOLITION

Architect’s Newspaper, September 11, 2020

Matt Hickman, associate editor of The Architect’s Newspaper, wrote one of the first major articles about the current threat to the Burroughs Wellcome building. In it, he quotes from Liz Waytkus of Docomomo US.

“Burroughs Wellcome is a significant design of architecture that rises to the level of exceptional. There is absolutely nothing else like it and it would be devastating to Paul Rudolph’s canon of built works to lose it,” said Liz Waytkus, executive director of Docomomo US, when reached for comment. “While Rudolph’s homes continue to be highly valued, many of his civic and commercial designs have been severely compromised, threatened and destroyed. Docomomo US has advocated for years if not decades for the preservation of many of his major projects and we are frustrated as to what it will take for this country to recognize this true American Master of modernism.”

INTO THE SPACESHIP: A VISIT TO THE OLD BURROUGHS WELLCOME BUILDING

Tropics of Meta, June 13, 2016

Alex Sayf Cummings is an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the History Department at Georgia State University. Dr. Cummings, who is senior editor of the history blog, Tropics of Meta, recently published a study of Research Triangle Park (in which the Burroughs Wellcome building resides): Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy. In June, 2016, she was part of a tour of the Burroughs Wellcome building—which is currently unoccupied—and below are excerpts from her post, reporting on the visit. Her post elicited numerous responses: many from people who, having worked Burroughs Wellcome, knew the building well and had warm memories of being there—and we also include a selection of those comments.

No longer supplied with power, the building becomes a dark warren of workspaces and hallways, occasionally illumined by natural light from outside. Undoubtedly [the building] felt different when it was electrified and occupied, with the presence of people and the trappings of business, work, and research. . . . tour participant Cynthia de Miranda—an architectural historian whose father was a scientist at Burroughs Wellcome—averred that the building always struck her as warm and pleasant during her visits as a child.

As scholars and lovers of architecture, we look forward to the day when the building’s remainder is restored to its former greatness, an emblem of the wild aesthetic ambitions of modernism in its late heyday and the information economy at the moment of its emergence. Love it or hate it, Rudolph’s design remains an impressively audacious creative gesture and an important part of the history of both architecture and Research Triangle Park.

COMMENTS:

Simply amazing, I worked in this building for many years, very fond memories of it.

I never found it claustrophobic during my 25 years. The building was alive with interesting people.

I will never forget the first time I drove up and saw this “out of this world spaceship!” I spent many good years there, and was fortunate to be employed in such an incredible building, with incredible people. I still feel honored to have been part of the Burroughs Wellcome family.

. . . .all of us who recall the vibrancy of this building . . . .I count myself very fortunate to have worked there. It was an amazing structure. We were young, and life was full of hope and promise. We were all witnesses, if not direct contributors, to amazing scientific discoveries and their promotion, during an exciting time for medical research.

I spent 32 years with [Burroughs Wellcome]. . . .and helped work on the layout of the labs to fit the 22.5 degree sloping walls of bright orange and blue. At that time, if any space was conceived to bring out the creative, inspirational, thoughts—this was it, in my opinion. I loved working there. We invented and developed more pharmaceutical products in those years. . . .We were “family” but more to the point we were colleagues who were allowed to trust the expertise of each other.

I have such special memories of my time at Burroughs-Wellcome. . . .Every Christmas there was a huge Christmas Tree in the lobby that almost reached the ceiling and the bottom was covered with several rows of the most beautiful poinsettia plants. With only about 400-500 employees in the entire building, it felt like a large family. The colors in the building were bold and bright, mostly dark blue and orange. As you entered the research area the carpet was orange and the administration side of the building had blue carpet. On the top floor of the administration wing the custom seats that ran around the walls were covered in a dark tan suede leather. The conference table in the boardroom was huge. The bottom was thick plexiglass and the top was covered in tan leather strips that were woven together. . . . it was a fabulous experience to work at Burroughs-Wellcome and one that I will never forget. The people I worked with changed my life and I have nothing but fond memories.

This is fascinating! When I was 9, my parents took me to the opening of the building, and for many years I wanted to be an architect because of it.

According to the Historic American Building Survey’s report the building (from which this image comes): “Archival records reveal that a softball field was positioned behind the Burroughs Wellcome building for leisure activities.”

YOU CAN HELP SAVE BURROUGHS WELLCOME !

Burroughs Wellcome’s loss would be a disaster—a titanic waste of our nation’s cultural heritage.

When a great building is destroyed, there are no second chances.

NOW, THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO:

• Sign the petition to save Burroughs Wellcome. You can sign it here.

• We’ll send you bulletins about the latest developments. To get them, please join our foundation’s mailing list: you’ll get all the updates, (as well as other Rudolphian news.)—you can sign up at the bottom of this page.

The Burroughs Wellcome building presents multiple impressive facets. Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith

Rudolph at Burroughs Wellcome: Concept, Development, and the Caring Details

The Burroughs Wellcome was designed for growth—and this is a section drawing study by Paul Rudolph, for an extension to the building. Such a colorful drawing might look exuberantly and boldly “arty” (as though the architect had only a nebulous relation to practicalities)—but a close inspection shows that, while Rudolph was developing the overall concept, he was simultaneously paying close attention to dimensions, adjacencies, floor heights, and the locations of different functions. This kind of drawing—seemingly florid, but layered with distilled, practical information—is typical of the kind of study drawings which Paul Rudolph did at the beginning of his design process. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

"We Must Understand That After All The Building Committees, The Conflicting Interests, The Budget Considerations, And The Limitations Of His Fellow Man Have Been Taken Into Consideration, The Architect’s Responsibility Has Just Begun. He Must Understand That Exhilarating, Awesome Moment.

When He Takes Pencil In Hand, And Holds It Poised Above A White Sheet Of Paper, He Has Suspended There All That Has Gone Before And All That Will Ever Be." 

—Paul Rudolph

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: THE MYSTERY

In looking at Burroughs Wellcome—one of Paul Rudolph’s best (and best loved) creations—one naturally wonders: How did such a design come to be? With a prolific architect like Rudolph, whose creativity took him along so many different paths, that’s a compelling inquiry.

“How does the magic happen?” That’s one way of putting one of the most fascinating questions about the creation of architecture—for it’s indeed a wonder how one gets all-the-way from a client’s request to a tangible, solid, building that’s ready-for-occupancy.

The least mysterious phase happens at the end of the process: once a “construction set” of drawings (sometimes called “working drawings” or the “contract set”) has been drawn-up by he architect and issued to the general contractor, the process of construction is fairly well understood. [Although, as anyone who’s ever been involved in building project can tell you, it is also fraught with possible pitfalls, detours, and surprises.]

But perhaps it would be useful to return to the beginning of the process….

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: THE PROGRAM

Initially, the architect receives requests and information from the client: the “program”. Sometimes this is nebulously articulated—or conversely, sometimes the client’s needs are enumerated in intimidatingly calibrated detail. Rudolph wrote urgently about the need to get, early on, as much info as possible:

“Always, always, always, everything, everything, everything at the beginning. I'm a great believer in the big bang. You cannot isolate parts, ever. That's the reason why it's so important to know as much detail as possible at the very beginning.”

“I'm just saying that for me it's a matter of getting your fingers on what you can and cannot do from a legal viewpoint . . . . You have to know what's possible. Architecture is not a question of the purely theoretical if you're interested in building buildings. It's the art of what is possible.”

A sketch by Paul Rudolph, in which he’s working out the design of a hallway within Burroughs Wellcome. This sort of drawing shows another aspect of the architect’s working method: the section is sketched adjacent to the plan, and at the same scale (so that both can be well coordinated). At top right one can clearly see part of the plan layout, including rooms and what appear to be laboratory benches. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

At Burroughs Wellcome—which functioned as not only a corporate headquarters, but as also an active pharmaceutical research center with extensive laboratories and testing facilitates (where Nobel Prize winning work was conducted!)—Rudolph would have received a careful listing of the functions that the 300,000 square foot building had to accommodate, including the approximate sq. ft. area needed for each. Sometimes programs also indicate significant “adjacencies” (what specific spaces need to be nearby each other).

Just as important (as the above “material” needs) are the intangible ones: what the project means to the client, and what it will communicate. Significance and symbolism: they’re as much part of the program as the list of required rooms. It’s not always easy to determine this, and clients are generally not used to articulating such matters. As Rudolph states, it’s important to find out..

“…what it is the owner truly wants to do— but he doesn't necessarily tell you, you have to read between the lines— and what should be done ideally.”

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: THE GRAND SYNTHESIS

It is at this point that the mystery truly begins. The architect creates an overall concept for the building’s organization: the “parti”—and with it will be the architect’s most central decisions about the building’s placement on the site, the organization of the plan, and the shaping of spaces and volumes—along with concepts about which structural system and what materials are to be used.

Looking over the architect’s shoulder—in the process of creation? Here Paul Rudolph is photographed working at his drawing board in his New Haven office, with members of his staff in the background.

How this happens—the very process of creation—is one of the great human questions, whether it be examined in the context of painting, music, literature, or architecture. Some architects refuse even to talk about it, claiming it’s a very intimate matter (and likely, one they don’t even quite understand themselves.) Some are prolix in their explanations, offering either theoretical, meat-and-potatoes, or poetic rationales for what they do. At the other end of the spectrum are “functionalist” architects like Hannes Meyer (who, for several years, was director of the Bauhaus): he claimed that arriving at design solutions was like solving an a mathematical problem, and he offered a stark equation: Function x Economy = Architecture. Rudolph repudiated such such an extreme position, saying:

All I'm really saying is that the most rational architect in the world is not to be trusted at all because there is no such thing as true rationalism when you are speaking of architecture.

Rudolph himself acknowledged the mystery of the phenomena of creation:

“In terms of how one goes about designing anything, you don't really know, or at least I don't know, until after the fact. There are so many elements that come into play that if you wait to figure out what it is you truly want to do once you have a project to work on there won't be enough time. You have to, as I see it, have a reservoir of things that you feel should be done and then you draw on that reservoir and hopefully apply elements from that reservoir in an intelligent fashion. . . . . You can have one hundred reasons why you do things after the fact.”

“I can say that in spite of all the rationalizations that architects go through, including myself, you can pay no attention to what architects say, you can only pay attention to what they do.”

Because architecture must deal with very practical issues—from space needs -to- the structural capacity of steel—the truth about the nature of architectural creation would necessarily be a merging of the functional and the artistic ways of solving problems. Beyond that, the essential nature of the “synthetic leap” is conjectural (though the topic of design creativity has been an area of ongoing serious research.)

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: DEVELOPMENT

Burroughs Wellcome allows us to see another aspect of architectural creation: “design development.”

Architects use “development” in a different sense than is used in the real estate field. Architecturally, it means taking the designer’s original conception of the building and working out the particulars.

A section sketch drawing, by Paul Rudolph, showing him in the process of designing the canopy for the main entrance to the Burroughs Wellcome building. A good example of design development, the drawing shows how Rudolph was working out his idea about the shaping of the space and volumes—yet simultaneously thinking through the structure (steel beams and possibly steel joists are shown), scale (his placement of figures), choice of materials, and key dimensions. His use of color, to indicate different materials and planes, is part of the language of architectural drawing which extends back to the 18th century. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

For example: it’s not enough that the architect might have started out by envisioning a lobby with cantilevered balconies, supported by a steel structure. In the design development phase, the exact heights, projection, angles, and materials of those balconies would begin to be thought through (including their relationship to the building’s structure.)

Below is Rudolph’s perspective- section rendering through the Burroughs Wellcome building and site:

Paul Rudolph’s perspective-section rendering through Burroughs Wellcome, cutting though the main entry lobby, and showing the building’s relation to the site. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

In the middle of it, he shows one of the building’s most famous features— it’s entry lobby:

Enlargement of a portion of Paul Rudolph’s perspective-section through the Burroughs Wellcome building, focusing in on the main entry lobby. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

Clearly, he already—even at this stage—has a thorough conception the layout and features of this lobby. In this rendering one can see important features, including: the stepped volumes at the right side of of the second floor’s balcony, the steps and platforms in the foreground and in the distance, the beam crossing from one side of the third floor’s balcony to the other, and the angled columns.

And in the actual, built space—

Burroughs Wellcome’s main entry lobby. Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith

—these aspects of the design were almost exactly carried out.

Enlarging a portion of that section-perspective rendering reveals that Rudolph was already thinking about the structural aspects of the building—and not just the diagonal columns. Below you can see that the section cuts through steel beams—and, allowing for perspective, that steel-work would have framed directly into the diagonal vertical structure.

Close-up of Paul Rudolph’s perspective-section through the Burroughs Wellcome building, here focusing in on the main lobby’s third floor balconies. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

One might imagine that, for an architect of Rudolph’s vast experience, inclusion of such structural elements in a rendering (and placing them in the right locations) would be almost intuitive. Perhaps—so for a clearer example of development, let’s look at what happens when the Burroughs Wellcome building section needs to move in the direction of constructable drawings.

Close-up of Paul Rudolph’s perspective-section rendering of Burroughs Wellcome, focusing on the main body of the building and its entry lobby. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Above is an enlargement of the main body of the building’s section-perspective. It’s beautiful to look at, and Rudolph’s legendary skill as a perspectivist pulls us in, fascinated by the forms he’s chosen and the rich ways he’s depicted them.

But this is where design development begins: those forms and spaces need to be exactly defined and dimensioned, materials need to be specified, and the relationship of all the parts needs to be coordinated with precision (including with the structural system). Below is the a drawing, from Rudolph’s office, which does this: it’s filled with notes, dimensions, and shows the relationship of the section to adjacent parts of the building which are beyond. This development will then lead to more drawings—which contain even more construction information (including final details)

Section drawing, through main entrance, of the Burroughs Wellcome building. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: CARE IN THE DETAILS

When someone refers to “details,” they are usually peaking of the smallest (or least important) aspects of a project or situation—and the use of the term is often dismissive. But in architecture, the opposite is true: the “details” are intensely important. When architects say “details,” they mean the particular ways that the parts (and assemblies of parts) and materials of a building are selected, shaped, located, and connected together.

Rudolph’s attention to the detail was comprehensive, and even extended to the drainage channels (which he used to form striking angled lines on the building’s exterior), aligning them with the window divisions (“muntins”) and designing a ground-level concrete element (“splash block”) that further carried out the linear theme. Photograph © PJ McDonnell, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation Archives

This can extend to from things that occupants would hardly ever notice (like how waterproofing materials are positioned), to things they directly see and engage with daily (like the design of railings, elevator buttons, and even the choice of typeface for the building address numbers.) These visual elements may, in themselves, be small—-but cumulatively they convey a sense that the building was designed with thoroughness and unflagging attention. It shows that the architect cared, and that each decision (whether it be about the shape of a stair nosing or the tint of the windows) is consistent with an overall vision for the building. [And if such care is not exercised, even a new building can convey a sense of disheartening sloppiness.]

Rudolph cared.

He learned this not only from his teachers, like Gropius (the drawings for whose projects are detailed with surprising care), but also from the beginning of his practice, when he had to become inventive with inexpensive materials in order to work within modest construction budgets. And of course, Mies van der Rohe—one of the titans of Modernism—had a famous saying that all architects knew well: “God is in the details.”

A building’s construction set, which includes drawings of all the details, occupies a large part of an architect’s (and their staff’s) attention. This can mean generating dozens (and for some very complex buildings: hundreds) of drawings. It’s a challenge to maintain the architect’s original “vision” of the building, so that it does not get distorted or diluted in the course of creating the construction documents from which it will be built.

A CASE STUDY: DETAILS AT BURROUGHS WELLCOME

At Burroughs Welcome, we can follow an example of the care which Rudolph and his team brought to the details.

Below-left is reproduced the right side of Rudolph’s perspective-section through Burroughs Wellcome. In it we can see that the edges of the floors typically terminate in a set of continuous architectural elements: a band of angled windows, a band of angled skylights, and a band of angled portions of the exterior wall.

Below-right is an enlargement of the uppermost example of that floor-window-wall-skylight assembly. The architect, in doing the construction drawings, will be concerned about each juncture:

• Where the top of the skylight meets the building (in this case: there’s a small upright, at the end of the floor, at the top of the skylight—possibly forming a rainwater drainage channel.)

• The bottom of the skylight, where it meets the top of the angled wall.

• The bottom of the angled wall, where it meets the top of the angled window.

• The bottom of the window, where it meets the angled skylight of the next floor down.

Left: a portion of Rudolph’s section-perspective, showing the the right side of the building. Above: an enlargement of one of the assemblies at the edge of the uppermost floor. It includes the angled skylight, angled exterior wall, and angled window. Both drawings © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

Exactly how each one of these adjacencies (architects’ term for them is: “conditions”) is to be detailed is one of the great challenges of an architect’s practice—especially if they care that the details are consistent with (and supportive of) their original vision for the building.

In working out the details, an architect will not only be conscious of their general concept for the building, but they will simultaneously be focused on a large number of practical questions, such as:

• Can these conditions be made waterproof?

• Is there sufficient thermal insulation?

• Are the proposed materials available?

• Will building this assembly fit within the construction budget?

• Can the proposed arrangement be built by available construction methods?

• Does the proposed design allow for regular maintenance to be performed?

• If something needs replacement(like a window pane), can it be easily repaired?

• Will the materials age well?

And—-

• If any of the above presents a problem, what alternatives can be devised (which will not violate the architect’s overall conception for the building)?

Below is one sheet from the extensive set of construction drawings that Rudolph and his office prepared for the Burroughs Wellcome building—and it shows the very assembly we’ve been considering!

Detail of inclined window and skylight section and construction details, from the set of construction drawings prepared by Paul Rudolph and his office for the Burroughs Wellcome building. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Below is an enlargement of the right side of that drawing. It goes into great detail about all of the adjacencies (from top-to-bottom: roof to skylight; skylight to wall; wall to window, and window to skylight.) Materials, dimensions, connections, required features, and relationships to other parts of the building are noted with thoroughness.

But even that is not sufficient. To get the building built—in the way the architect envisioned it—even more information needs to be provided to the contractor.

An enlargement of a portion of the above drawing, focusing on the inclined window and skylight. The circled area indicates the areas of the assembly where the glazing meets the building’s walls—and those adjacencies are worked-out in great detail below, in a sheet from the same set set of construction drawings.© The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

The great English architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, said construction drawings were like “a writing letter to the builder” telling him what to do. For Burroughs Wellcome, even more detail had to be put into Rudolph’s “letter” to the contractor—and within the the area we’ve circled (above) are three conditions that needed to be magnified further, in order to really show how they’re to be built.

Below is the drawing which resulted—another sheet in the construction set. These details are drawn-full size, and show precisely the shapes, configurations, materials, and dimensions of every component—metalwork, structure, glass, waterproofing, drainage channel, glazing gaskets, connectors, and even an anchor for the window washer—needed to make the assembly buildable, and practical for ongoing life of he building.

Inclined window and skylight construction details, from the set of constuction drawings prepared by Paul Rudolph and his office for the Burroughs Wellcome building. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

Rudolph himself recognized the challenge of doing thorough construction drawings (including the detailing)—and the consequences if the challenge is not met and the vision is lost:

“Architecture is a personal effort, and the fewer people coming between you and your work the better. … This is a very real problem, and you can only stretch one man so far. The heart can fall right out of a building during the production of working drawings, and sometimes you would not even recognize your own building unless you followed it through.”

All that work, all that thinking, all that time—just to get the details right.

Easy? No. Important? Supremely! Did Rudolph do it? Absolutely!

SAVE BURROUGHS WELLCOME !

Losing Burroughs Wellcome would be a cultural disaster—a titanic loss to our country’s cultural heritage.

When a great building is destroyed, there are no second chances.

FOR NOW, THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO:

• Sign the petition to save Burroughs Wellcome. You can sign it here.

• We’ll send you bulletins about the latest developments. To get them, please join our foundation’s mailing list: you’ll get all the updates, (as well as other Rudolphian news.)—you can sign up at the bottom of this page.

Models were also part of Rudolph’s design process. This would be a “presentation model”—shown to the client for their final approval, as well as for the corporate leadership to use to communicate about the project to stakeholders and the public. But “alumni”—former staff members of his office—have also told us that Rudolph also used models to develop his designs. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

Burroughs Wellcome was a pharmaceutical company, whose corporate symbol was a unicorn. In Rudolph’s model of the building (at left), he proposed a large unicorn sculpture as part of the main entrance plaza. It did not work out to include that sculpture—so Rudolph developed and distilled the idea. What he came up with (and got built) is a prominent flagpole, angled and pointed to evoke a unicorn’s horn—a brilliant feature and detail.

Paul Rudolph's spectacular Burroughs Wellcome Headquarters — a History

Paul Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome headquarters & research center in Durham, N.C. Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith

Out of a half-century career of creative and prolific work, Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome headquarters & research center stands out as one of his finest works. We’re now fighting to save this magnificent example of the convergence of corporate & scientific vision and architectural talent—and we thought it would be useful to share an outline of it’s history, purpose, and features.

A SITE FOR GROWTH: THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK

The Burroughs Wellcome building (shown circled here), at 3030 East Cornwallis Road, in Durham, N.C.’s Research Triangle Park. Only a portion of this celebrated research development is shown here, but even in this partial view, one can see some of Burroughs Wellcome’s distinguished neighbors—among them: IBM, Cree, Toshiba, RTI, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, and the National Humanities Center. Image courtesy of Google Maps.

A closer aerial view of the Burroughs Wellcome complex. Shown here is its current state, after a Rudolph-designed addition to the building (that had been located to the lower-left) had been demolished by the current owner. Landscape features, designed by Rudolph, have also been removed from the site. Image courtesy of Google Maps.

Founded in 1959, Durham, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park is one of the most prominent research developments in the US. This is where hundreds of distinguished firms and organizations located their headquarters and research centers—and it is here that Burroughs Wellcome placed their US headquarters and laboratories.

They chose Paul Rudolph as their architect, and the project commenced design work in his office in 1969, and was completed and dedicated in 1972.

Burroughs Wellcome was designed for growth: the initial, main body of the building, was followed by several additions—in 1976, 1978, and 1982—all designed by Rudolph. His work in 1982 also included a master plan for the overall site.

The story of Durham’s Research Triangle Park is comprehensively told in Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy by Alex Cummings, PhD—and this fascinating study includes coverage of the Burroughs Wellcome building.

THE BUILDING: ITS PURPOSE, HISTORY, AND FEATURES

• In February 1969, pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome purchases a little over 66 acres of rolling woodland in Durahm, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. The company is a subsidiary of The Wellcome Foundation Ltd., based in the UK.

• The client requests of Paul Rudolph a design that will be shaped to its needs, yet remain architecturally distinctive.

Burroughs Wellcome’s symbol is a unicorn—and Rudolph wanted to have a statue of a unicorn at the building’’s entry (it’s even shown on his architectural model for the building). When it did not work out to do include the statue, Rudolph came up with a creative alternative: a flagpole that would evoke the Burroughs Wellcome symbol, by being angled to match the unicorn’s horn.

• Flexibility is a primary goal: each major area in Rudolph’s plan—laboratories, administration, and support services—are capable of being expanded by linear addition. To allow for this, Rudolph leaves the expansible ends of the building expressed as a pattern of flattened hexagons, so that the elements can be extended horizontally without disturbing the building’s visual order.

• The building program includes 312,303 square feet of research laboratory and administrative space, including: 140 labs, a library, auditorium, cafeteria, and support activity spaces for 400 workers.

• In plan, the building forms a giant “S”, with opposing arms that form a main entry court and a large service yard. Reception, cafeteria, library, auditorium, and administrative offices flank the entry court. Laboratories, research offices, and testing facilities surround the service yard.

• The building exterior (and parts of the interior) is finished with a limestone aggregate which is sprayed-in-place, into to a plastic binder. [Rudolph used the same textured finish in several subsequent projects.] This exposed aggregate finish was used on 140,000 square feet of exterior walls and 90,000 square feet of interior walls. Rudolph estimated the finish required 20,000,000 stones to complete!

• The building’s structure is an eccentrically loaded trapezoidal steel frame, with columns inclined at 22.5 degrees. Rudolph’s original slant of the design was changed at the request of the building’s structural system. This is the sort of practical accommodation that an architect who’d been long in practice, like Rudolph, would be used to receiving and accommodating.

• The building is dedicated on Friday, April 7th 1972.

• A collectors medallion is issued to celebrate the dedication which features a rendering of the building on one side, and a unicorn (the company’s logo) on the other side.

The ground-breaking ceremony marking the commencement of construction of the Burroughs Wellcome building in Durham’s Research Triangle Park. Paul Rudolph is at the right.

At completion, a commemorative medal was issued for the 1972 dedication.

• As part of the dedication ceremony, Rudolph gives a walking tour of the building. He writes a description of the building saying, “the building is conceived as a man-made extension of the ridge upon which it is built. The building is terraced, each floor being smaller that the one below it. Its placement allows people to enter from below walking through a courtyard and porch into the lobby.”

• The building interior and exterior are used as part of the set for the 1983 science fiction film Brainstorm starring Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood. 

• The building is originally known as the Burroughs-Wellcome Company Headquarters (and later the GlaxoSmithKline Building.)

• The original building has several additions, all designed by Paul Rudolph, including: a Main Building addition in 1976, a Toxicology/Experimental Pathology Building addition in 1978 and a South Building Expansion in 1982. Rudolph also was asked to create a new Masterplan for the site in 1982.

• The building is closed to the public for decades for security reasons, while pharmaceutical companies Glaxo, Glaxo Wellcome, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) actively use it as offices and research laboratories. Employees are not permitted to take cameras into the facility, due to the sensitivity of the research being conducted.

• The building is renamed the Elion-Hitchings Building in 1988, honoring Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings - research chemists with Burroughs Wellcome who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir James Black. Their prize-winning research was done while they were working at the building.

• On April 21, 1989 four ACT UP activists barricade themselves inside an office in the building: they demand a cut in the price of AZT (at that time the most expensive medicine in history.)

• In 1995, Burroughs Wellcome and Glaxo merge to become Glaxo Wellcome, and a merger between that company and SmithKline Beecham establishes the company as GlaxoSmithKline. The company’s operations are then relocated another facility.

• In February 2010 the building is listed for sale.

• On June 30 2012, Glaxo sells its iconic Elion-Hitchings Building, two interconnected office building, ,and 140 acres of land for $17.5 million to United Therapeutics.

• On October 20 2012, the building is opened for a public tour, arranged by Triangle Modernist Houses (now USModernist) with United Therapeutics. A video of the event can be watched here.

• United Therapeutics demolishes part of the structure in 2014.

• On September 4, 2020 United Therapeutics is issued a demolition permit for the building from the City of Durham. Clear Site Industrial, LLC is listed as the demolition contractor.

SAVE THIS GREAT ARCHITECTURE

Losing Burroughs Wellcome would be a cultural disaster—a titanic loss to our country’s cultural heritage.

When a great building is destroyed, there are no second chances.

FOR NOW, THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO:

• Sign the petition to save Burroughs Wellcome. You can sign it here.

• We’ll send you bulletins about the latest developments. To get them, please join our foundation’s mailing list: you’ll get all the updates, (as well as other Rudolphian news.)—you can sign up at the bottom of this page.

While Modern architecture has often been accused of being color-phobic (and primarily relying on a limited of primarily whites, grays, and beige), that was never true of Rudolph’s work. He could skillfully incorporate even the boldest colors—as shown here in a Burroughs Wellcome interior—which he used to enliven a building’s spaces. Photograph by Henry L. Kamphoefner

NOW UNDER THREAT: One of Paul Rudolph's most amazing designs— the Burroughs Wellcome HQ

Completed in 1972, the Burroughs Wellcome headquarters & research center shows Paul Rudolph at the height of his creative and problem-solving powers. Above, the main building is shown on the right, and the later extension (also by Rudolph) is on the left. Photo by Joseph W. Molitor. Image courtesy of Joseph W. Molitor architectural photographs collection, located in Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives.

RESEARCH, ARCHITECTURE—AND THE THREAT TO A GREAT BUILDING

Durham, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park is one of the most prominent research developments in the US. It’s here that distinguished firms and organizations have chosen to place their headquarters and research centers—and it has facilities for hundreds of organizatons, including: IBM, Cree, BASF, Cisco, Lenovo, Underwriters Laboratories, and the EPA.

Some have attempted to construct not only efficient buildings, but ones of architectural merit.—and of all of them, it is Paul Rudolph’s BURROUGHS WELLCOME HEADQUARTERS which stands out.

But now, that building is threatened with destruction. A controversial demolition permit has been issued, and the future of the this architectural masterpiece is in immediate jeopardy. We’ll be giving you updates about this—including how you can help save it. But to start, we thought it would be well worth it to tell you a bit about the building—especially why it’s significant.

The client said they wanted an architecturally distinctive building. They got what they asked for—and Rudolph’s ability to create memorable and forward-looking architecture extended to all the spaces of the Burroughs Wellcome building. This can be seen most vividly in the main entry lobby (which also shows Rudolph’s bold handling of color.). Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith

A BUILDING dYNAMIC IN ITS TIME—AND FOR THE FUTURE

In a half-century career filled with architectural landmarks, gems, and masterworks, Burroughs Wellcome is on many people’s “top ten” list of Rudolph’s designs—and here are some reasons why it’s significant:

• It is one of Rudolph’s largest constructed projects: So one sees, substantively, how a brilliant designer worked out his ideas about siting, planning, spatial organization, interiors, and finishes in a comprehensive, large-scale way, and over a variety of conditions and spaces.

• A design for growth: Rudolph was concerned for the future—of cities, homes, education, and of individual buildings. He knew that, in very tangible ways, buildings are never finished, and must be flexible to accommodate the future. Rudolph designed Burroughs Wellcome with change and expansion in mind: its striking geometries and planning were designed for growth. In fact, this was not just one building, but a growing complex: the main building being designed in 1969; and with extensions added in 1976, 1978, and 1982—that latter date including work on a master plan for the site. [In architecture, as in other fields, there’s no greater compliment than “repeat business.”—and that Rudolph was repeatedly called back by the Burroughs Wellcome leadership shows that his work was practical and beneficial.]

• New paths in creating space: Even though he profoundly respected Mies and Gropius (and acknowledged their importance to him) Rudolph rejected their “universal space” concept—an approach to architectural planning which led to undifferentiated, bland, grid-like spaces: the kind found so often found in the office and educational building designs of his contemporaries. Like Wright, Rudolph sought to create spaces of variety and richness, ones which would allow for varying uses and inspiring experiences. Moreover, he saw that overlapping spaces had the potential to increase communication among a building’s users—a significant advantage in a building for research, corporate coordination, or education. Rudolph had previously, in his Yale Art & Architecture Building, shown how this can be done within a sculpturally handled rectilinear geometry. At Burroughs Wellcome, his oeuvre moves forward into the dynamic realm of angled forms and spaces—ones which simultaneously offer energy and a sense of stability. [This geometry is so striking that the building has been used as the setting for film and television: it was part of the set for the 1983 science fiction film Brainstorm (starring Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood), and was in several episodes of the TV series Revolution.]

• Humanizing materials: Much architectural work, even of the Modern “masters,” is composed with hard, surgically smooth planes. Rudolph was a pioneer in bringing vivid textures back onto the palette of modern architecture. At Burroughs Wellcome, Rudolph specified an exterior finish using a limestone aggregate which was sprayed in place into a plastic binder (and he used similar finishes in subsequent projects.) Such texturing humanizes a building, moving it away from the sterility of which other architects’ buildings are often accused.

• Careful siting and massing: Here, we’ll let the architect speak for himself:

This complex climbs up and down a beautiful ridge in the green hills of North Carolina and is architecturally an extension of its site. An “A frame” allows the greatest volume to be housed on the lower floors and yet connected to the smaller mechanical system at the apex of the building. The diagonal movement of interior space opens up magnificent opportunities. Anticipation of growth and change is implicit in the concept. — Paul Rudolph, in Moholy-Nagy, Sibyl. The Architecture of Paul Rudolph, 1970

• The opposite of blandness: So many corporate facilitates are dull boxes—uninspiring, and creating no impression of pride or identity. From the beginning, Burroughs Wellome’s leadership recognized the specialness of what they’d built—as evidenced in this statement from the company’s President:

This building is an exciting and ingenious combination of forms [in which] one discovers new and different qualities of forms and spaces . . . a splendid climate for scientific scholarship and for the exchange of ideas. — Fred A. Coe Jr., President of Burroughs Wellcome

• A comprehensive work of “wholeness": Rocco Leonardis, a practicing architect and scholar who had a long association with Rudolph, characterized the essential work of architects as “creating wholes.” At Burroughs Wellcome, site placement, structural elements, exterior shapes, viewing angles, steps and paths, interiors, finishes, details—and even the closets and the placement of the flagpole—all are carefully coordinated (especially within the overall diagonal geometry), creating a “total” work of great power and charm.

Rudolph maintained good relations with the company, and was called back—several times—to do further work on the complex. This is his perspective rendering of the dining area—a dynamic space which was constructed as part of the 1976 extension. That addition has been demolished, and now the main part of the building is under threat too. Image © the estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Paul Rudolph himself greatly prized the design, as is clear from his using Burroughs Wellcome’s Headquarters building for the cover of the monograph on his celebrated drawings.

WILL THERE BE A FUTURE FOR THIS GREAT WORK?

Losing Burroughs Wellcome would be a cultural disaster—a titanic loss to this country’s cultural heritage.

We cannot let that happen—and when a building is demo’d, there are no second chances.

In upcoming posts, we’ll let you know more about the building. Even more important, we’ll keep you updated about the our efforts to save it from destruction—a fate that’s befallen too many of this great architect’s works, and which should not be allowed to happen again.

FOR NOW: THERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO—

• Sign the petition to save Burroughs Wellcome. You can sign it here.

• We’ll send you bulletins about the latest developments. To get them, please join our foundation’s mailing list: you’ll get all updates, (as well as other Rudolphian news.)—you can sign up at the bottom of this page.

Rudolph’s full section drawing through the main headquarters building, indicating the dynamic spaces within—and the building’s relation to the site. Image © the estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation