Celebrating The Half-Century of a Modern Classic: “New Directions in American Architecture”

The cover of a much coveted book. Robert A. M. Stern’s 1969 survey and assessment offered an intelligent and concise (and well illustrated) overview of the main pathways of then-current American architecture—and the work of its most prominent practitioners (including Paul Rudolph).

A GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY

It’s hard to believe, but New Directions in American Architecture, the landmark book by Robert A. M. Stern, came out a half-century ago. First published in 1969 (with a new, enlarged edition in 1977) it is worth acknowledging and celebrating a work that was so intensely studied, discussed, and turned-to for inspiration by architecture students and professionals. It was a book that made a difference.

A WORTHY PREDECESSOR

Paul Heyer (1936-1997) was a New York-based architect, educator, and author—and his colleagues and students remember him as the most urbane of Englishmen. His 1966 book, “Architects on Architecture” was later published in an expanded edition in 1993.

For context, we note another book which covered an overlapping range of work (and—at least partially—of the same era): Paul Heyer’s Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America.

Heyer’s book came out in 1966, a few years before Stern’s New Directions, and—while the territory had similarities (both showing what was being built in America, and by whom)—the material covered, and the manner it was covered, was different. Heyer’s book was, in its way, more comprehensive: it had individual chapters on many of the architects that Stern would write about—but it also included a profusion of talented, prolific American architects who would get hardly a mention (if named at all) in Stern’s book (i.e.: John Carl Warnecke, Hugh Stubbins, Craig Elwood, William Wurster…). It also had sections on architects like Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius—forefathers of architectural Modernism—who were, at the time of publication, still alive and practicing.

What Heyer had created could be characterized as an informationally (and visually) rich grand survey—and the book remains fascinating to dip into, and is a fine resource for researchers.

Subsequently, Paul Heyer brought out a different study: “American Architecture: Ideas and Ideologies in the Late Twentieth Century,” which looked at a similar (though updated) set of architects, and examined their work through formal./stylistic/ordering themes.

STERN’S BOOK: THE GO-TO GUIDE TO WHAT WAS HAPPENING—AND WHO THE PLAYERS WERE

A page from New Directions in American Architecture, on which are illustrated designs for the Boston City Hall. At top is Mitchell, Giurgola’s second prize-winning entry (shown in a perspective drawing); below is Kallmann, McKinnell, and Knowles winning entry (shown under construction).

In contrast to Heyer’s more encyclopedic approach, Stern’s book was focused on the Now, and—just as important—the meaning of what was shown (and how those meanings might propel the design process.0 New Directions in American Architecture offered a compelling report—and provisional assessment—on the cultural churning then happening within the world of architecture, which was an era of crisis, excitement, and creativity in all domains of modern life.

Yes, several prominent architects of the post-WWII generation (like Philip Johnson and Paul Rudolph) were included—and received respectful coverage of the their work. But one can speculate that it was necessary to show them. Perhaps it was because they were not only quite active professionals, but also so that their work could act as a contrast to the the more recently risen stars shown in the rest of the book. And those pages are abundant with the exciting work of the rising (or recently risen) stars: Kahn, Charles Moore; Venturi and Rauch; Carlin and Millard (a firm whose work is not widely discussed now, but which is well worth studying); Davis, Brody and Associates; DMJM; Tigerman; Mitchell, Giurgola; Roche, Dinkeloo and Associates, and numerous others.

Stern’s voice is hardly that of a reporter aiming only for journalistic neutrality. G. E. Kidder Smith’s review of the original edition (published in the March, 1972 issue of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians) puts it well:

A provocative, vexing, hence far tooo brief (three-page) introduction sets the stage for New Directions in American Architecture, and one will find that the subsequent pages both inform and irritate—all of which makes for a slender but simulating volume. Beginning with the very choice of the seven bellwethers shown to typify the “new directions”—like any panel of architects or selection of buildings, a process automatically insuring challenges—a philosophy unfolds that at times will startle.

Along with his reservations, Kidder Smith does acknowledge:

The author’s critical analysis and appraisals command respect for their often penetrating incisiveness.

And those analyses and appraisals are conveyed through clear language—which today seems undervalued in architectural writing—and layered with Stern’s high intelligence and knowledge of history and the national architectural scene.

PRICE— AND TRUE WORTH

The book’s price when it first came out—as shown on the cover.

The book was a medium-size paperback of moderate length (128 pages), with numerous black & white illustrations. What would one expect the price to be for such a volume? The cover (shown at the top of this article) has a cover price of 25S—that’s twenty-five shillings, indicating that the example pictured was a British edition. The cover of the American edition—the one in the library of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation—shows it in US currency: $2.95

That may seem jaw-droppingly inexpensive—can one buy anything today for such an amount?!—but that’s hardly the case. The current, inflation-adjusted equivalent for both the American and British prices is a bit over $20—which is about par for books of similar format today.

Even so, it’s worth considering the book’s “worth” in an enlarged sense—for New Directions in American Architecture that holds up well: it continues to be a fascinating resource on the creative voices of that era—a body of accomplishment and ideas which retain their presence and power.

BRAZILLER: A PUBLISHER OF DISTINCTION

The book was published by Braziller—a name dear to architecture book lovers, for they published—and continue to offer—fine books on the topic. During the 1960’s-70’s, when the New Directions series came out, they were particularly prolific in architectural publishing.

George Braziller (1916-2017) and Marsha Braziller (d. 1970) started in the book business in 1940’s, and began their own publishing firm in 1955. The company is well-known for their visually-oriented books on art, as well as publishing serious works of literature, criticism, history—and architecture! After his retirement, George Braziller wrote an intriguing memoir of his publishing adventures (highlighting the fascinating characters he encountered.) The firm is run by their sons, and their books are currently distributed through another distinguished publisher: W.W.Norton.

PART OF A SERIES—AND A CROSS-CULTURAL PANORAMA

Udo Kultermann’s book on the work of African architects—one of the volumes in Braziller’s New Directions series.

"New Directions in American Architecture was part of the “New Directions” series published by Braziller. Other volumes in that series, published or announced, were on:

• Japanese Architecture

• African Architecture

• British Architecture

• German Architecture

• Soviet Architecture

• Latin American Architecture

• Italian Architecture

• Swiss Architecture

These were authored by some of the most eminent architectural historians of that era—scholars like Kultermann, von Moos, Boyd, Kopp, and Gregotti. The author of the American volume, Robert A. M. Stern—relatively unknown at the time—has gone on to some prominence of his own….

A FRESH CONTINUATION…

Less than a decade later, Robert A. M. Stern and Braziller brought out a New Enlarged Edition of the book. Published in 1977, it included the full body of the earlier, 1969 text—but the volume was extended by the addition of further works by Venturi, Moore, and Mitchell Giurgola.

An important added section, titled Postscript: At The Edge of Postmodernism, also gave coverage to newer participants whose work and voices were widening the architectural discourse: Eisenman, Meier, Greenberg, Graves, and Gwathmey / Siegel (names not even mentioned in the first edition). Stern’s office (Robert A. M. Stern and John S. Hagmann) was also represented by two of their most interesting early residential projects: the Lang House; and a newly constructed townhouse fronting on Park Avenue.

Like the original edition, the 1977 enlarged edition gave the reader a chance to encounter not just the design work of a vital group of architects, but also the ideas which were the philosophical underpinnings of this fresh oeuvre.

Paul Rudolph is ICONIC— in the New Book on American Houses !

We already knew that Paul Rudolph’s work is “iconic”—especially if one goes by the dictionary definition:

widely known and recognized, and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence

But it’s always good to have that affirmed by others—and we’re even more delighted when that assessment takes the form of a beautiful new book on residential architecture:

THE ICONIC AMERICAN HOUSE

The time-scale which the book covers is from 1900 to the present—well over a century of innovative, forward looking, elegant, and striking designs. Introducing it, Dominic Bradbury writes:

“The houses in this book chart a journey across America and across time, embracing many different aesthetics and expressions of form. . . .They are shining landmarks. . . .full of life, drama, and invention.”

The book manifests excellence by several criteria:

Sample spreads from the book—the ones above and below are of Rudolph’s Healy (“Cocoon”) Guest House; and the two spreads below that are of Rudolph’s Hiss (“Umbrella”) House.

• Selection and surprise: Many of the fifty houses profiled are well-known to all lovers of architecture (Fallingwater, the Eames House, the Glass House….) But part of the delight of this book is that one discovers houses that are unfamiliar, or designs that you’d only vaguely-but-intriguingly heard about. Thus, in this volume, you can finally visit the near-legendary High Desert House (Joshua Tree, CA) by Kendrick Bangs Kellogg"; and get to look inside houses you’d previously only known by a single glimpse—like the Sculptured House (Golden, CO) by Charles Deaton.

• Freshness of View: Bradbury brings keen insight, and offers key information for every project—but it’s the book’s visual sense that stands-out for us. Even with buildings which we’ve looked at over-and-over, Richard Powers’ photographs help us see them with a first-time freshness—and that allows us to discover new aspects of buildings and interiors which had been as familiar as the faces of old friends.

• Production Values: Reinforcing the sense of the specialness, of the houses chosen for inclusion, are the physical aspects of the book: the volume’s overall size (allowing one to even see details with clarity), the choice of paper (of a luxurious thickness), and the careful color balance of the printed images (neither dry nor saturated).

• Highlighting Paul Rudolph: Of course, the book is filled with he work of some of he most famous architects of the 20th Century—boldface names like Wright, Johnson, Niemeyer, Venturi, Kahn, Shindler… But Rudolph is one of the few architects to have two houses in the book: the Healy (“Cocoon”) Guest House, and the Hiss (“Umbrella”) House (both in Sarasota, FL, where Rudolph started his career.)

Each of the book’s 50 residences is presented across several pages, with photos, descriptive text, and informative captions.

Shown here are some of the page spreads, from the sections on the two Rudolph’s houses chosen for the book. [But Note: our photos of the book cannot begin to convey the richness, sharpness, and careful color balance of the photographs in the actual book!]

WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

Our only quibble with the book—but one worth noting in the interest of historical accuracy—is in the identification of Rudolph’s design work with his early partner, Ralph Twitchell. The book seems to give an equal measure of credit for the late 1940’s Healy (“Cocoon”) Guest House to both Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph. It’s true that they were partners at that time, and that Twitchell had the “contacts” to bring in work, and that he was a highly knowledgeable presence on the construction site. But the consensus among historians is that Rudolph was the firm’s prime designer—and certainly the creative source for the kind of architectural innovation shown in the Healy project. As historians, we reject any attempts to erase figures from architectural history, or to underplay authentic contributions to the design process—but we also seek accuracy, and we hope that this point about design responsibility will be adjusted in any future editions of this fine book.

RELATED VOLUMES

Writer Dominic Bradbury and photographer Richard Powers—both energetic participants in covering the world of design—have partnered on numerous other books on architecture and interiors. This new book might be considered to be part of a series, as they’ve previously published two volumes on related topics, with the same publisher, and in a matching format: The Iconic House and The Iconic Interior.

Two other of their design-focused books, forming an…

…“ICONIC” series, published by Thames & Hudson.

THE AUTHORS

DOMINIC BRADBURY - WRITER

Prolific author of books with a strong focus on architecture and design, Dominic Bradbury is a writer, journalist, consultant, and lecturer—including having been guest speaker at the Victoria & Albert Museum. His abundant books (many done with photographer Richard Powers) include: Mid-Century Modern Complete, The Iconic House, The Iconic Interior, Atlas of Mid-Century Modern Houses, and The Secret Life of the Modern House—and as a journalist he has contributed to magazines and newspapers internationally, including The Financial Times, House & Garden, World of Interiors, The Guardian, and Architectural Digest.

RICHARD POWERS - PHOTOGRAPHER

In his quarter-century of professional experience, Richard Powers has developed a remarkable oeuvre, specializing in the photography of interiors, architecture, and the built environment. With a portfolio that shows a worldwide scope, he has received commissions from design firms and publications such as Architectural Digest, The Wall Street Journal, World of Interiors, and publishers like Thames & Hudson and Rizzoli. His photographs are featured in over 20 books (many done with Dominic Bradbury), including The Iconic Interior, New Natural Home, Superhouse, and Waterside Modern.

BELOW are two further spreads from The Iconic American House, from the section on Wright’s Fallingwater—additional evidence of the beautiful and informative work of this talented partnership.

BOOK INFORMATION AND AVAILABILITY:

• TITLE: The Iconic American House

• AUTHORS: Dominic Bradbury, with photography by Richard Powers

• PUBLISHER: Thames & Hudson

• FORMAT: Hardcover; 11-1/4 x 10-1/2 inches; 320 pages; 400 illustrations

• ISBN: 9780500022955

• PUBISHER’S WEB PAGE FOR THE BOOK: here

• AMAZON PAGE: here

• BARNES & NOBLE PAGE: here

Shown below are the book’s Contents pages, with a grid of photos of the 50 houses which the authors chose to include—and above is a portion of one of those pages, showing Rudolph is in very good company with Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen, the Eames, Alden B. Dow…

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Toying with Architecture: Rudolph, Lego, and Modularity

A FASCINATING IMAGE: Paul Rudolph, sitting on the floor and working—or playing (or both!)—with Legos. He looks to be creating what might be a high-rise residential structure that would express his ideas about how whole apartments could be manufactured and lifted-into-place (as what he called “the brick of the future.”) Around him are numerous boxes of Lego sets (at far left, a pair of them are sitting on a Mies Barcelona chair!), and in the foreground a large number of Lego blocks have already—through Rudolph’s hands—taken on architectonic form.

AND A REVEALING ONE: This photo is also interesting for what else one can detect about Rudolph’s working context. It was taken in one of Rudolph’s work spaces (his office at 54 West 57th Street) and, hung in the background, one can see models of two of Rudolph’s commissions. At the upper-right is a large model of his 1966 design for a resort community at Stafford Harbor, Virginia (and the form of that project’s clusters of housing resonate well with the Lego aesthetic.) Also at the top, just left of center, one can see a “Toio” floor lamp, designed by Achille Castiglioni (which is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.) While Italian lighting fixtures are now widely available in the US, when this early 1970’s photo was taken one was much less likely to encounter (and be able to purchase) examples of high-level imported industrial design. To the left of that is a Luxo lamp (which were then ubiquitous in architects’ offices as lighting for their drawing boards.) Image is from a photo print found within the archive of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

ARCHITECTS MAKE TOYS & TOYS MAKE ARCHITECTS

Architecture is usually a serious matter, as even the smallest construction projects entail large commitments of funds, time, and focus. Moreover, architects and builders must engage with issues of durability, fitness to purpose, the practical constraints of materials and available skills, and conformance with construction regulations that are meant to ensure safety. Anyone who has spent time on construction sites—particularly if it is during a site visit by an architect—quickly realizes that these are venues where frivolity is forbidden, and great tensions are at work.

But there’s also a long engagement between Modern architects and play—specifically: TOYS.

This Toy-Architect relationship operates in two directions:

• Architects that have designed toys—both literally, and in the sense that some of their work is toy-like.

• Toys that have designed architects—-in the sense that toys having a formative influence on them.

ARCHITECTS AS TOYMAKERS

Architects (and their close associates) have been surprisingly prolific in the creation of toys—and here are some better-known examples:

• Though the most famous building toys (A. C. Gilbert’s Erector Set and Frank Hornby’s Meccano) were not designed by architects, at least one of them—Gilbert’s—was inspired by his observation of actual steel girders used in large-scale construction.

  But the third most famous building toy—Lincoln Logs—invented in 1916, and still available today—was designed by an architect: John Lloyd Wright. (1892-1972.) He was Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, and—although he had a long and productive career designing a wide range of buildings—he’ll probably remain best known for the creation of this toy.

• The Bauhaus was also a source of toy designs, and the challenge of designing them was taken-up by some students.

  The most well-known example—and one which has continued to be in production—is a Building Blocks Set designed by Alma Siedhoff-Buscher (1899–1944) while she was a student at the Bauhaus. There were two versions: the first in 1923, with 32 blocks; and a larger set in the following year, with 39. The blocks, of various colors, shapes, and sizes, offer an almost infinite opportunity for creative compositions—figurative, architectural, and abstract—though it is best known with them assembled into the form of a sailboat (which was illustrated on the exterior of the set’s original packaging.)

  The flexibility of the Bauhaus style and approach (which allowed it to be applied to challenges as diverse in scale and purpose as architecture, city planning, furniture, textiles, lighting, typography, pottery—and toys!) has never stopped attracting designers—and an ever-widening audience of consumers. Thus, though the Bauhaus has past its centenary, its geometries, motifs, and overall “look” continue to be utilized for every type of design work—even for more recently designed objects of amusement. The growth and victory of this style, and indeed the identity “Bauhaus” itself, is deeply explored in Philipp Oswalt’s incisive book, “The Bauhaus Brand” published by Scheidegger and Spiess—a visually rich and penetrating study of how this “brand” has become omnipresent.

• It’s also worth nothing that the same playful. toy-creating spirit can be seen in another of the Bauhaus’s most notable productions: the Triadic Ballet, developed by Bauhaus teacher Oskar Schlemmer (1888–1943.)

  The ballet’s costume designs, by Schlemmer—which are more famous than the performance itself (some are shown here)—are perceivable as giant (human sized), moving toy creatures, many of which hew to the geometric Bauhaus aesthetic.

• Since models, of proposed buildings, are part of every architect’s practice, doll houses would seem to be a natural arena for their talents—and one of our earlier posts was about a very Modern Rudolphian version of a dollhouse.

  The ultimate example of an architect engaged in doll house design was the one created by the final master of the English Renaissance, Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869–1944). His Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House (completed in 1924 for Great Britain’s then reigning queen, and now to be seen at Windsor Castle) was an elaborate affair, and the Royal Collection Trust describes it as including “. . . .contributions from over 1,500 of the finest artists, craftsmen and manufacturers of the early twentieth century. From life below stairs to the high-society setting of the saloon and dining room, and from a library bursting with original works by the top literary names of the day, to a fully stocked wine cellar and a garden, created by Gertrude Jekyll, no detail was forgotten. The house even includes electricity, running hot and cold water and working lifts.”

• German Expressionist architect Hermann Finsterlin (1887–1973) is primarily known through his drawings: dreamlike visions of buildings which are often so fantastical that one wonders if they were intended for humans habitation.

  Finsterlin also designed charming, colorful toys: some with intersecting geometric forms, and others that are more recognizably architectonic. The latter types were designed as assemblies of smaller parts, which could be disassembled and, presumably, creatively repositioned into new configurations.

  Putting “Hermann Finsterlin toys” in Google Images yields a large number of pictures of his visionary drawings, as well as of his equally otherworldly models—but one will also see a some of of his toys. A screen capture (from such an image search), with a number of those toys, can be seen at right.

• That most serious of the Modern movement’s master architects, Le Corbusier, did have a playful side, but he’s not generally known to have designed any toys.

  But one model—which he used to explain the offset layout of apartments in his Unité d'habitation—is definitely toy-like. Such explanatory aids might seem “cute”—but that quality could well be an architect’s strategic choice, as the interest and even friendliness which models evoke can be effective tools of persuasion. Even so, looking at this intriguing image today, what is also evoked is a Corbusian version of Jenga.

• Charles Eames (1907–1978) and Ray Eames (1912–1988), partners professionally and in life, had—and continue to hold—world-wide reputations for their inventive approach to meeting the widest range of design challenges. Working in architecture, exhibit design, cinema, graphics, and—most famously—furniture, their designs are known for what futurist John Naisbitt would call “high touch”: a sense of human, personal interaction (something needed ever more powerfully in the midst of a technological society.) So, even though Eames-designed products (like their celebrated series of chairs) were manufactured by industrial processes, those objects convey a human and often playful spirit—and that was further evident in their design of films and exhibitions.

  In 1945, as part of their research into molding plywood into three-dimensional curved shapes, they created a two-part, child-scaled elephant seat. The compound curvatures, entailed in making it, were particularly challenging, and it never went into mass-production during the Eames’ lifetime [but, since 2017, it has been made available by Vitra.]

  Also in the play mode is the “House of Cards” set, designed by the Eames and originating in 1952 (with variant and larger versions, issued in subsequent decades.) Enjoyed, and marketed for both adults and children, the cards show a rich assortment of photographs or patterns and objects, and are slotted to allow them to be constructed into a variety of configurations. The card sets continue to be produced, and are also in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

The Rudolph family, with young Paul Rudolph at far left. This would have been taken probably shortly before he made the house model.

• The archives of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation include a letter from Paul Rudolph’s mother, Eurie Stone Rudolph. Internal evidence indicates that it was probably written in the mid-1960s (she makes reference to having visited the New York World’s Fair (1964-1965). The memories of her son, shared in that letter, include young Rudolph creating a miniature house. It is probably mentioned as evidence of his early interest in architecture—but what he built was also something approaching a doll house in scale and detail (though Rudolph would likely eschew that term.).

  She writes: “After we moved to Franklin, Paul decided to make a Model house, out of cardboard. It was an ideal home with everything a home could have in it. He made the furniture of first one thing and another. Made lamp bases from marbles, made a Gov. Winthrop Bookcase and little tiny books to go in the case. Made shingles for the house, about one forth inch wide and half an inch long. Made windows, then a friend gave him a little set of electric light[s] for the house. He had it all wired and would turn the lights on to show through the windows. When we moved to Athens [Alabama} we moved that six foot house as Paul did not want to give it up. It had given him a lot of pleasure to show it to people as they always seemed so interested in that he had made everything.” [The full text of this fascinating letter can be found in the catalog of the Paul Rudolph centenary exhibit.]

One notable point about many of the above toys (and also the one we’ll discuss below) is that they’re systems. A toy model set that allows one to construct a single type of thing (for example, of the Space Shuttle) is a system: a kit of parts that makes a whole. But most of the toys above are what Christopher Alexander called a generating system: a kit of parts that allows one to make multiple wholes. Built-in to generating systems is flexibility of arrangement and the freedom to invent new configurations. When this quality is found in a toy, that’s perfect for encouraging an exploration of (and sensitivity to) the possibilities of design.

FROEBELIZATION — TOYS CREATING ARCHITECTS?

The most famous connection between toys and Modern architecture goes in the other direction: not architects making toys, but rather: toys making architects. We speak, of course, about the Froebel Blocks. Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel (or Froebel) (1782–1852) was a German educator, active in the first half of the 19th Century. He was one of the creators of the modern recognition that children have unique needs and capabilities, created the concept of the kindergarten (including creating the word), and designed a comprehensive set of educational toys known as “Froebel gifts”. They were primarily composed of a series of progressively more sophisticated sets of blocks. Frank Lloyd Wright was given a set, shortly before he turned ten years old, and in his autobiography wrote:

“For several years I sat at the little kindergarten table-top ruled by lines about four inches apart each way making four-inch squares; and, among other things, played upon these ‘unit-lines’ with the square (cube), the circle (sphere) and the triangle (tetrahedron or tripod)—these were smooth maple-wood blocks. All are in my fingers to this day.”  

—and—

“The virtue of all this lay in the awakening of the child-mind to rhythmic structures in Nature… I soon became susceptible to constructive pattern evolving in everything I saw.”

What could be constructed from the blocks—and what creativity might it induce in a child? Wright clearly thought they were influential on him—and the fact that Le Corbusier and Buckminster Fuller were also exposed to the Froebel system is suggestive of a fruitful connection between this type of education and the formal results emerging when (and if) the child becomes a professional designer. Ultimately, such cause-and-effect remains in the realm of speculation—but it has received the deep exploration in the late Jeanne S. Rubin’s book: “Intimate Triangle: Architecture of Crystals, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Froebel Kindergarten".

The other scholar of this topic—perhaps world’s greatest expert on architectural toys—is Norman Brosterman, an architect, curator, historian, and writer. His collection (including building sets like the Froebel system) was acquired by the CCA - the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Several exhibits have focused on toys from that collection, and several books on the topic, by Brosterman, have been published: “Potential Archicture,” “Building in Boxes,” and “Inventing Kindergarten.”

Architectural historians have made-the-case that it would not be a great leap to go from the compositional possibilities offered by the Froebel sets of blocks -to- the designs of Wright. Brosterman and others have offered some visual evidence—as in this paring of images from one of his books (shown here.)

RUDOLPH AND LEGO

Although it ceased regular publication two decades ago, and has faded from public consciousness, LIFE magazine had been—for nearly 2/3 of a century—one of the titans of US magazine publishing and was part of the consciousness of every American. With a circulation of millions of copies-a-week, the famous LIFE logo—bold sans-serif letters within a red rectangle—became synonymous with the best in photojournalism: LIFE’s photographers and reporters delved into every aspect of the human experience and nature—from the playful -to- the most somber, from peaceful creativity -to- the darkest tragedies of war. With its enormous circulation and respect, anything—or anybody—that got published in LIFE was lifted to national attention.

LIFE’s December 15, 1972 Special Double Issue on the Joys of Christmas looked at the holiday from a variety of viewpoints, utilizing the photo-essay format for which the magazine was celebrated. The issue included articles about Bethlehem, holiday preparations and celebration on an American farm, a timeline of historic events that have happened on Christmas day, ongoing acts of charity from around the country, and examples of artistic and ornamental Christmas baking.

Among this smorgasbord of holiday celebration is an article that—even if there wasn’t an explicit Christmas connection, certainly carries a mood of joy: “Masterminds At Play”. On the magazine’s Contents page, the editors expressed their intent in this way:

“Some ingenious grown-ups get a chance to see what they can do with children’s playthings.”

And, in the article’s introductory text, they further explain:

“As every child who has grown-up within grabbing distance knows, toys fascinate adults. With a sympathetic nod to the kids, therefor, LIFE asked four particularly inventive adults to indulge their impulses and have a good time with gadgets usually only get a chance to play with.”

Their choice of creative adults was stellar—each masters in their own field: custom car designer George Barris (whose most famous work was the 1960’s TV version of the Batmobile), artist Norman Laliberte (whose colorful banners suffused the Vatican Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair), writer Lonne Elder III (known for his script for the classic film, “Sounder”), cinematic master Federico Fellini—and Paul Rudolph.

While Fellini clowned with some children’s makeup, and Elder wrote a brief play for a pair of marionettes, Rudolph worked with LEGO blocks—many sets of them (we counted at least 8 boxes of Legos in one photo Rudolph at work with them.). As the article’s text mentions, he supplemented the blocks with plastic rods. [Rudolph associate Ernest Wagner tells us that Paul Rudolph liked to explore the industrial surplus and plastic supply stores which could then be found on downtown New York’s Canal Street—and such venues would likely have been them source of those rods.]

We’ve reproduced Rudolph’s page below—and, in case the texts are hard to read, we’ve transcribed them for you. The introduction on Rudolph’s page explains:

Mastermind with Building Blocks

Architect Paul Rudolph is former head of the Yale School of Architecture and a pioneer of the use of modules—the prefabricated, prewired units that can be shipped to a building site and assembled in any one of countless configurations. Given a dozen sets of Lego to start with with, Rudolph noted how the toy building blocs resemble modules—moreover could be put together to form a very satisfying kind of skyscraper. Using plastic rods for extra support, Rudolph quickly built three scale-model apartment buildings and observed that he would be happy to design more buildings this way if only the blocks were slightly longer and narrower. Real modules have to be shipped by road, and “Legos wouldn’t quite fit.”

And the caption reads:

Working in his studio above, Rudolph assembles he small Lego pieces, which connect with interlocking teeth, then put all the parts together to form the larges of this models (right). It contains 35 to 40 living units in each of 11 clusters grouped around a central service core, and stands four feet high.

WHY LEGOS?

Of course, with it’s brick-like construction system and pieces, it would be natural to associate Lego with architecture. Over the decades, there have been numerous examples and exhibits of architects and designers using Legos, either attempting to recreate well-known buildings, or to explore new architectural designs.

For about the last decade, the Lego company has proclaimed a connection between their system and iconic architecture by issuing sets of blocks which are constructible into some of the most famous Modern architectural works of the 20th Century, among them: the Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, SOM’s John Hancock Building, the United Nations headquarters—and even Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House.

Wright seems to be a favorite, in that he’s the only architect that they’ve chosen who has the honor by having several of his buildings done as Lego sets: the Robie House, the Imperial Hotel, the Guggenheim Museum, and Fallingwater—the last one of which seems to work especially well with the Lego system.

But why did LIFE magazine connect Rudolph and Legos? Were the editors already aware of Rudolph’s oeuvre, and noticed the visual resonance between some of his projects and the Lego system? Or did they approach Rudolph, telling him the premise of the article, and ask him what he’d like to “play” with?

RUDOLPH, MODULARITY, aND “THE BRICK OF THE FUTURE”

We’ve seen no records about how Paul Rudolph’s participation in the LIFE article came about—but its text does point to a topic which was of ongoing and intense interest to Rudolph: what he called “the brick of the future” (which he also sometimes called “the twentieth century brick.”)

Those are Rudolph’s terms for a future possibility for architecture and the construction industry: entire apartments would be made off-site in factories, and then transported to the construction site. The construction site would have structures to receive these modules, and the apartment units—like modular bricks—would be lifted into their final locations and connected to utilities.

Generally, Rudolph envisioned that “brick of the future” apartment houses would be in the shape of towers—sometimes quite tall—and that’s what his design in the LIFE article looks like (see enlargement from the article, at right). But Rudolph also had additional possible configurations in mind: mid-rise stepped assemblies, and low-rise (two or three stories) versions, where the units would spread across a landscape.

Rudolph’s liking for, and interest in modular (or modular-like) “brick”-unit forms can be seen across most of his 50-year career—it is one of his major architectural, technological, aesthetic, and policy commitments—of which he explicitly and repeatedly spoke, and tried to bring to fruition in numerous projects.

Sometimes this affinity comes out of aesthetic considerations. Rudolph, well-aware of all chapters in the history of Modern design and art, would have digested the artistic genome of overlapping and projecting rectilinear forms. This type of design was manifest in the architecture and sculpture of the early decades of the Modern movement—and superb examples can be seen in this pair of sculptures by De Stijl artist George Vantongerloo (1886-1965) shown here (and one can easily imagine them being constructed out of Legos!) Also, creating compositions like this was a standard exercise in Modern, Bauhaus-derived design education programs—and remains so in some schools today. Even more pertinent, it’s worth remembering that Rudolph was a student, at Harvard, of Walter Gropius—the former director of the Bauhaus.

One can see this artistic, sculptural approach, using module-like forms, in his 1960 project for O’Brien’s Motor Lodge (shown below), and in his 1963 design for the Orange County Government Center.

Of the O’Brien project, Rudolph himself later connected it to his modular concerns, saying:

“In a sense this is an earlier study of the formal architectural possibilities of the large scale, three-dimensional, pre-fabricated unit (Twentieth Century Brick), but constructed by traditional methods of brick and concrete.”

One can also see his idea to use modular, brick-like apartments used—not just as a form, but explicitly as a construction system—in a design from about the same time: his 1959 project for a Trailer Apartment Tower (see Rudolph’s sketch at right). He said of this proposal:

“For a number of years now I have felt that one way around the housing impasse would be to utilize either mobile houses or truck vans placed in such a way that the roof of one unit provides the terrace for the one above. Of course the essence of this is to utilize existing three dimensional prefabricated units of light construction originally intended as moving units but adapted to fixed situations and transformed into architecturally acceptable living units. One approach would be to utilize vertical hollow tubes, probably rectangular in section, 40 or 50 stories in height to accommodate stairs, elevators and mechanical services and to form a support for cantilever trusses at the top. These cantilever trusses would give a ‘sky hook’ from which the three dimensional unit could be hoisted into place and plugged into its vertical mechanical core.”

PAUL RUDOLPH’S MODULAR PORTFOLIO

Looking through Rudolph’s oeuvre, one can see that the modular, LEGO-like approach comes up repeatedly. In addition to the projects shown above, below we’ll look at 4 others which evidence his ongoing interest in this such a construction/design system.

1967 - GRAPHIC ARTS CENTER

Designed to be placed on the Western edge of Manhattan island (slightly north of the site of the World Trade Center), the Graphic Arts Center was a to be a large complex that would include housing (4,000 apartments!), offices, manufacturing, shops, schools, a marina, and other facilities. Rudolph describes his intent—including the use of a modular building approach:

“The proposals for the Graphic Arts Center are based on the concept of the megastructure, or the idea that many functions can be served in a single large building complex. In this case there are facilities for industry (lithography, legal and financial printers); office space; 4,000 apartments of varying kinds; elementary schools, kindergartens; play spaces at grade, as well as on platforms in the sky; community center; restaurants; commercial shopping; gardens and recreational space; and parking-trucking access incorporating portions of the West Side Highway. In other words, it is a city within a city. The idea of a megastructure is different from the idea of building an apartment house, industrial and office space, schools and restaurants. Rather, it is the intent to build all of these multiple functions in one complex.”

“The apartment houses are, perhaps, conceptually the most interesting, since they propose to utilize techniques developed by the mobile house industry (this industry now accounts for one out of five new housing starts in the United States and the graph is steadily going upward). These units would hang from trusses supported on masts which contain elevator and stair cores, plus vertical lines of utilities. By arranging the mobile house units in “log cabin” fashion, the roof for one becomes the terrace for the one above.”

A model of a one of the towers of the Graphic Arts Center. One can see the connection to Rudolph’s other modular-oriented designs, as well as the model he later made for the LIFE article.

A portion of Paul Rudolph’s large model of the proposed Graphic Arts Center (which was to be built in lower Manhattan) in which one can get an idea of the project’s immense scale.

1968 - ORIENTAL MASONIC GARDENS

Prefabrication was part of the architectural zeitgeist of the 1960’s, and the US government—through their “Operation Breakthrough”—sponsored a large number of experiments in an attempt to find out if industrialized housing was a viable approach for creating housing. That was the context for Oriental Masonic Gardens, a federally-aided project designed help solve housing shortages in New Haven. Rudolph’s design included 2-to-5 bedroom apartments, and consisted of 148 units on 12.5 acres. The housing was made of pre-fabricated units (a total of 333 modules), which were brought to the site and arranged in a two-level configuration (which gave each residence a private yard).

Bedeviled by issues of construction quality, this forward-thinking experiment was eventually demolished in 1981. Rudolph acknowledged the problems of the project, but continued to think that this approach—prefabrication—contained the possibility of positive solutions to creating housing that was economical, but which also allowing for formal and spatial variety.

Oriental Masonic Gardens’ modules, whose designs allowed for a variety of differently sized housing options, were manufactured off-site and then craned into place.

The homes were duplexes, and were placed in cruciform configurations. Even though they were contiguous, each home in these 4-unit clusters had their own separate yard.

1967 - LOMEX: THE LOWER MANHATTAN EXPRESSWAY

The Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX) was a project to connect bridges (that were located on the opposite sides of Manhattan island) with a new throughway. The existing streetscape would not allow for high-speed movement between those two points, and so a new, borough-spanning solution was called for. Rather than this being just a matter of highway engineering, Paul Rudolph approached it comprehensively: his design embraced multiple modes of transportation, housing, offices and other facilities—-all within a dramatic megastructural vision that took on varying shapes and heights to accommodate different functions.

A key aspect of Rudolph’s design was the use of prefabrication for the high-rise housing. Vertical structures (which had, built-into them, elevators, stairs, and utilities like plumbing and electricity) would be erected; and then apartments—modular units manufactured off-site—would be trucked-in and slotted into place. Here again, this modular system could be flexible, with the units arranged in different configurations, and on structures of varying heights.

Paul Rudolph’s perspective rendering of LOMEX, which would have spanned all across Manhattan. In the distance (to be located at Manhattan island’s edges) can be seen high-rise residential towers that are part of the project—and they were to use the pre-manufactured “brick of the future” housing system that Rudolph envisioned.

Rudolph’s drawing, illustrating an aspect of the LOMEX project’s high rise housing system. Housing modules—the “brick of the future”—would be manufactured off-site, and delivered to the site by truck (see bottom of drawing.) They would then be craned upward, and set into permanent place on the building’s structural system.

1980 - THE COLONNADE

Rudolph intended these luxury condominiums, The Colonnade in Singapore, to be built using the modular, “brick of the future” approach that he’d been investigating and trying for decades. For reasons of timing and local economics, it ended up being built with more conventional construction methods—but one can see, both in Rudolph’s drawings and in the final result, that the form of the concept was retained. Rudolph’s original intent still may have potential for the construction of buildings like this.)

Shown is a portion of one of Rudolph’s drawing for The Colonnade: an isometric rendering, showing the exterior, with highly articulated volumes, grid-like horizontal and vertical structural elements, and a profusion of balconies. The modular intent is clearly manifest in this vision.

Apartments in The Colonnade are among the most sought after in Singapore. Even though it was ultimately built using conventional methods, its as-built presence still conveys Rudolph’s original concept of it being constructed with pre-fabricated units.

RUDOLPH’S FURTHER APPLICATIONS OF MODULARITY

Rudolph’s interest in, and attempts to apply the principle of flexible modularity, was not limited to building-scale projects. He also brought this approach to the design of construction systems, furniture, and lighting—and here are examples of each:

1960’s - RIBBED CONCRETE BLOCK SYSTEM

Rudolph’s most famous building is his Yale Art & Architecture Building, well-known for its ribbed concrete surfaces. To achieve that finish, the concrete was cast-in-place and then bush-hammered by hand. Rudolph liked the shadowed-/textured effect that the ribbing created, and used it in other buildings which he designed (i.e.: Endo Labs and the Boston Government Service Center). But that construction method proved too expensive to use in some projects, and Rudolph and his staff sought an alternative which would produce visually similar results.

For Crawford Manor, a 109 unit high-rise apartment building for elderly residents in The Bronx, NYC, they designed a set of concrete blocks with vertically ribbed surfaces. The system would still give the serrated effect that Rudolph wanted, but which would be significantly less expensive to construct. A variety of shapes. to accommodate different construction conditions, were designed—a Lego-like “generating system”. Construction began in 1964 and finished in 1966.

In addition to the cost savings. the ribbing visually “broke down” down the scale of concrete block (so as to avoid an unwanted monolithic look to the building), and it also prevented run-off stains: water is channeled into the interstices while the front of the block is exposed to cleaning. Rudolph’s modular ribbed concrete blocks were later used in several of his other buildings, such as the Chorley Elementary School and UMass Dartmouth.

A drawing, from Paul Rudolph’s office, showing precast and ribbed concrete blocks (as used at Crawford Manor). The version show (straight, with ribbing on both sides) would be only one of the set of shapes produced for this residential high-rise..

In this photo, one can see a variety of construction conditions (flat surfaces, curved surfaces, exterior and interior corners) for which different shapes of pre-cast ribbed concrete blocks were designed and manufactured.

1970’s - FURNITURE SYSTEM

Paul Rudolph designed his own Manhattan residence: his “Quadruplex” penthouse, near the United Nations. Rudolph often included built-in seating in his projects, and that’s very much part of this penthouse’s design. But he also wanted free-standing, movable furniture, and could not find any existing (to purchase) that met with his approval—so he created his own.

Rudolph came upon a system of connectors and metal tubes (“nodes and struts”) which was often used in retail settings to create display shelving. This was—like Lego—truly a “generating system.” Seeing the immense flexibility which the system offered, Rudolph proceeded to design (and have fabricated) a variety of furniture for his home. [Authorized editions of these designs continue to be offered, via the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.]

Among the purposes, for which Rudolph utilized the connector and tube system, was to create a display stand for an original Louis Sullivan panel which he owned (and that he placed in the Quadruplex’s living room.)

In addition to a rolling dining chair (shown above), Rudolph also created a rolling lounge chair, and as well as side-tables. The chairs are now being made available through the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

1970’s - LIGHTING SYSTEM

It’s fair to say that Rudolph was obsessed with light: both natural and artificial, and the effects that could be created with it. Through most of his career he designed custom lighting for his projects—and because he used standard electrical components (and sometimes industrial surplus), these inventive fixtures could also be inexpensive.

This interest in light fixture design evolved further. Architectural historian Timothy M. Rohan, in his monograph on Rudolph, writes:

Although he cared little for the everyday workings of business, Rudolph could be quite entrepreneurial. In 1976, Rudolph and[Ernst] Wagner founded Modulightor, a firm that sold lighting. . . .”

The system which Rudolph came up with used a limited number of parts and shapes—but, very much like Lego, this generating system of components could be arranged and assembled to create a vast range of light fixtures: sconces, art lighting, wall washers, chandeliers, task lights…. Rudolph not only designed the system, per se (which was simultaneously economical in approach, yet allowed for broad creativity), but he also designed a large line of fixtures which utilized the system. The Modulightor company continues to offer fixtures, using his approach.

Rudolph showed that, even with a limited set of shapes, an immense range of configurations are possible. This is manifest in abundance in the lighting system available from Modulightor—a firm he co-founded with Ernst Wagner. Shown are a few examples of the types and shapes of light fixtures that can be built from the generating system that Rudolph invented.

IMAGE CREDITS

Lincoln Logs: John Lloyd Wright, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Triadic Ballet: Fred Romero, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House: Rob Sangster, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons;  Le Corbusier Model: from Le Corbusier, Oeuvre complète (Zurich, 1950), vol 4, p 186, collection Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal; Eames Elephant: Sinikka Halme, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons;  Eames House of Cards: SebastianHelm, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons;  Rudolph Family: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Frobel Blocks Set: Kippelboy, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons;  Froebel Student Using Blocks: Maria Kraus-Boelte/John Kraus: The kindergarten guide: An illustrated hand-book. 1877, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons;  Vantongerloo Sculptures: http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/Classique_Baroque/pages/033.htm, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons;   O’Brian’s Motor Lodge: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Trailer Apartment Tower: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Graphic Arts Center Model in Rudolph Office: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Graphic Arts Center Model: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Oriental Masonic Gardens Construction Photo: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Oriental Masonic Gardens: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  LOMEX Perspective: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  LOMEX Construction Diagram: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Colonnade Drawing: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Crawford Manor Block Drawing: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Crawford Manor Photograph:  Photo by Kelvin Dickinson, © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Sullivan Panel: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation;  Rolling Chair: Courtesy of Peter Aaron;  Modulightor Fixtures:  Courtesy of Modulightor

The Engel Residence - featuring a stunning Rudolph addition - is on the market

Photo by Daniel Milstein Photography © PlanOmatic

Paul Rudolph’s Engel Residence at 20 Pleasant Ridge Road in Harrison, New York is for sale.

The original residence was constructed in 1939, and Paul Rudolph designed an addition to the home in 1986.

The Engel Residence addition is the result of a personal friendship between Cecile Engel and Paul Rudolph, who was a contributor to a book of essays she edited and published (Delphinium Blossoms: An Anthology).

The secluded 7,452 sq. ft. residence is situated on a private 4 acre landscaped property with an in-ground pool and tennis court, providing a tranquil oasis just 40 minutes from Grand Central in nearby New York City. The property abuts a maintained horse and hiking trail.

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The Rudolph addition features dramatic entertaining rooms with floor-to-ceiling picture windows and sliding doors looking out over the beautiful natural surroundings. The first floor includes several Rudolph design interventions including a one-of-a-kind temperature controlled 3,000-bottle wine room.

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A 1,570 sq. ft. stunning Master Suite designed by Rudolph offers serenity with soaring ceilings, floating beams and masterfully hidden lighting throughout the adjacent walk-in closets and oversized ensuite Master Bath complete with jacuzzi tub and travertine tiles.

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The property features a free form heated pool, tennis court, rolling lawns, stone terraces, and lush landscaping.

Property Details

Square Footage: 7,452 s.f.

Lot size : 4.0 acres (174,240 s.f.) landscaped with pool & tennis court, abuts a maintained horse/hiking trail

Location: Harrison, New York

Systems: Central Heating and Central Air Conditioning

Layout: 5 bedrooms and 5.5 baths, spread across a two level floor plan. The house features a detached garage with space for 2 cars accessible by covered walkway.

Taxes: 2019 -2020 ($23,350 / year)

The home is being offered for sale by the current owners for $1.9 million USD.

You can learn more about the Engel Residence (including more images of the interior and exterior) at the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation’s page for the property’s sale here.

It is always a good time to celebrate Paul Rudolph’s architecture —and we can’t think of a better way to celebrate the New Year than finding a new owner who will appreciate and preserve this modernist gem.

You can reach out to us at office@paulrudolphheritagefoundation.org for more information.

Megastructure — The Reissue of a Modern Classic (and Rudolph's on the cover!)

The cover of the new edition of “Megastructure: Urban Futures Of The Recent Past” which has been reissued by Monacelli Press. Paul Rudolph’s LOMEX project is featured on the cover.

A CLASSIC aBOUT THE FUTURE

The original, 1976 edition of Megastructure also featured Rudolph’s perspective-section of LOMEX on the cover (but in black and white). Over the years, copies of this edition have become rare and expensive.

“Megastructure” was architectural historian Reyner Banham’s book on one of the most exciting architectural developments the post-World War II era: MEGASTRUCTURES. It was originally published in 1976, and that edition became a rare book (if you could find a copy at all, it could cost hundreds of dollars.)

The good news is that Monacelli Press has brought out a reprint of this fascinating book. Monacelli is known for publishing books on design and the arts, and doing so with superb production values—and they live up to their fine reputation with this new edition.

The original had featured Paul Rudolph’s perspective-section drawing of his LOMEX project on the cover—and the new edition retains that image, but now shows it in color. It also includes a new foreword by Todd Gannon, the head of the Architecture Section at Ohio State University’s Knowlton School, and a scholar of Reyner Banham’s work. Banham’s book was published nearly 45 years ago, and Professor Gannon’s essay provides important context.

MEGASTRUCTURES

Above: Habitat, a housing complex built for the Expo 67 World’s Fair in Montreal. Designed by Moshe Safdie, it is sometimes cited as and example of the small percentage of megastructure proposals which actually got built. Middle: A street-level corner view of the Pompidou Center, the museum-arts-exhibition center which opened in Paris in 1977. As is evident here, it embraces some of the formal language often associated with megastructures: a celebration of articulated structure, and the explicit display of the building’s mechanical systems. Bottom: The Nakagin Capsule Tower, built in Tokyo in 1972. The possibility of growth and change—one of the characteristics associated with megastructures—is implied by the building’s cellular design.

Megastructures can be capsulized as vastly scaled and ambitiously conceived architectural designs—the size of a chunk of a city (or a whole metropolis.) But megastructures are not just defined by size. History already provides us an abundance of examples of built structures which awe by their scale—from the Pyramids -to- NASA’s huge Vertical Assembly Building—but which are not megastructures.

True megastructures usually embrace multiple functions, aspiring to be (or emulate) complete cities within a single armature. They often accommodate transportation (sometimes several types), and places for living, commerce, work, education, and entertainment—all within an infrastructure of structural and mechanical systems which are elaborately developed and expressed. [And if the design incorporated flexibility, to allow it to change or grow (or both), all-the-better—for that gave it an attractive dynamic quality.]

Megastructures were a “thing”—an exciting trend—in architecture, especially in the period when Banham was most well-known: the 1960’s. Architecture and popular magazines published stories about megastructures—either imaginary designs proposed by architects to deal with real (or equally imagined) urban problems -or- less frequently there was coverage of megastructure projects that had actual clients. Models of megastructures were magnets for attention at any design exhibition, and they filled the portfolios of that era’s architecture students (who are ever fascinated with the futuristic.) As one can imagine, relatively few megastructures (even those which were actually commissioned by a real client) were built—but these daring, forward-looking designs continue to excite because of their intriguing forms and the grandeur of their visions.

REYNER BANHAM

Banham (1922-1988) was hard to miss. The architectural historian had a relatively short life, but for a couple of decades—from the 60’s to the 80’s—he seemed to be everywhere. An un-ignorable presence—tall, broad-shouldered, with a full bushy beard, and with the bright-spirited presence of a boisterous English Santa Claus—he was inserted into the architectural community’s consciousness through his continuous lecturing, teaching, traveling, and via captivating books and journal articles. Those appearances—whether in person or print—were always accompanied by a sense of wonder: one resonated to Banham’s own combination of surprise and delight at what he had discovered and the enthusiasm with which he shared it. He always produced an intellectual an aesthetic thrill for those who followed him into exploring new areas of thought, or by looking into chapters of design history that had been left untended for too long.

THE “FIRST APROXIMATION” HISTORIAN

The Ponte Vecchio in Florence—Banham quotes Paul Rudolph as citing it as an example of a megastructure.

Le Corbusier’s perspective drawing of his urban design for Algiers, a project from the early 1930’s. The architect-designed overall structure provides space and flexibility for a variety of uses and designs (and even styles) which could be built within. This project is cited by Reyner Banham as an early example of a megastructure within the Modern movement.

While the prime era of megastructure design is the 1960’s, Banham’s book points out proto-megastructures—designs from throughout architectural history that share the characteristics of megastructures. He cites design complexes like Rockefeller Center -or- Medieval/Renaissance city bridges (upon which were accommodated a multiplicity of buildings and functions) -or- Le Corbusier’s urban design project for Algiers—and one of the pleasures of Banham’s work (both in this book and his other writings) was his ability to vividly connect seemingly new ideas with older architectural works which exemplified those theories.

With his work on megastructures—research he initiated in the mid-1970’s—Banham was engaged in what he called “first approximation history.” That’s his term for when an historian first attempts to grasp the outlines (and write the history) of a very recent movement or phenomenon. There’s always danger in doing that close to the era being studied: for without the perspective and wisdom that comes from viewing things at a distance of years (or decades), no historian can, with a high level of confidence, discern what was truly significant about an event or period. Yet, Banham asserted, somebody has got to be the first take on making an estimate and assessment of what happened—and that is what he termed the “first approximation.” He specifically cited the megastructure movement (which, when he started doing the research for the 1976 book, was passing out of its high-energy phase) as a subject for which he was acting as the first approximation historian.

PAUL RUDOLPH: MASTER OF MEGASTRUCTUES

A page spread, from within the Megastructures book, in which Rudolph and his LOMEX project are discussed.

Most megastructures are visionary, and such visions—dreams of an ideal life though residing within a singular and coherent vision of a highly advanced architectural structure—will inevitably remain in the land of the imagination.

But some megastructures did get built—and Paul Rudolph is notable as an architect for the ones that he designed—several of which were constructed.

Paul Rudolph was very conscious of the possibilities that megastructures offered—as shown in this portion of an interview of Rudolph conducted by Jeffrey Cook and Heinrich Klotz (to be found in their 1973 book Conversations With Architects—which is also quoted in Banham’s book):

Cook: What is the dominant tendency in architecture since Mies?

Rudolph: After Mies, the megastructure.

Cook: Are there any models for understanding the megastructure visually? Or does it remain in the realm of ideas. . . . Did you have any examples to work from for this idea?

Rudolph: Oh gosh, a lot of people have worked on megastructure. The best model I have found is the bridge in Florence.

Cook: Ponte Vecchio.

Rudolph: The Ponte Vecchio— the shops along the pedestrian way and over it marvelous housing. The scale of supports is in keeping with the vehicular way, and then there is a working down of scale. There is nothing new. That is a megastructure, and probably the purest example in traditional architecture.

It’s also worth noting that Rudolph was in Japan in 1960, at an international conference of architects where Metabolism—that Japanese architectural movement which most fervently embraced megastructures—was born. [We wrote about this in an earlier article, here.]

Rudolph having, digested (and maybe contributed to) the megastructure concept, designing using it—and this can clearly be seen in several significant projects. This approach was most manifest in his work in the 1960’s—the richest era, worldwide, for the design of megastructures.

Some of these designs from Rudolph’s oeuvre are among his most significant built works: the UMass Dartmouth campus, the Boston Government Service Center, and the Burroughs Wellcome headquarters and research center in North Carolina. The latter, Burroughs Wellcome, was specifically designed with flexibility for expansion—and, over the course of a decade, Rudolph did create several additions to it.

Even the unbuilt projects, like LOMEX, remain icons of design—and strong evidence of that project’s power is that Banham chose LOMEX for the cover of his book.

Rudolph returned to the megastructure approach in several large designs later in his career, and none more clearly than in his 1990 Gatot Subroto project for Jakarta.

1962: Rudolph’s Boston Govt. Service Center

1963: Rudolph’s UMass Dartmouth campus

1967: Rudolph’s Graphic Arts Center for NYC

1967: Rudolph’s LOMEX project for Manhattan

1969: Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome in North Carolina

1990: Rudolph’s Gatot Subroto for Jakarta

We congratulate and thank Monacelli Press for bringing out this excellent, new—and much needed—edition of Reyner Banham’s Megastructures.

BOOK INFORMATION AND AVAILABILITY:

• TITLE: Megastructure: Urban Futures Of The Recent Past

• AUTHOR: Reyner Banham; with a new foreword by Todd Gannon

• PUBLISHER: Monacelli Press

• FORMAT: Hardcover; 8-1/2 x 11 inches; 232 pages; 222 illustrations

• ISBN: 9781580935401

• PUBISHER’S WEB PAGE FOR THE BOOK: here

• AMAZON PAGE: here

• BARNES & NOBLE PAGE: here

IMAGE CREDITS:

Habitat at Expo 67: Photo by ProtoplasmaKid, via Wikimedia Commons; Pompidou Center: Photo by Gabriel Fernandes, via Wikimedia Commons; Nakagin Capsule Tower: Photo by Kakidai, via Wikimedia Commons; Ponte Vecchio: Photo by Amada44, via Wikimedia Commons; Boston Government Service Center: Photo by G. E. Kidder Smith, courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; UMass Dartmouth: Photograph by Kelvin Dickinson, © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Graphic Arts Center: Photographer unknown; LOMEX: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation'; Burroughs Wellcome: Image courtesy of the Wellcome Collection; Gatot Subroto: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Rudolph And His Architectural Photographers — PART TWO

P. J. McDonnell’s photograph of the Burroughs Wellcome building, in its current state, shows how great architecture has the power to always maintain its dignity. Photograph courtesy of © PJ McDonnell, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation Archives

In the first part of this study, Paul Rudolph And His Architectural Photographers—PART ONE, we looked at some of the most important architectural photographers of the 20th Century—Stoller, Kidder Smith, Molitor…—ones whose work had included a focus on the architecture and interiors of Paul Rudolph.

PART TWO—this article—will look at architecture & interiors photographers of the current era (almost all of whom are now very active!) whose work has also focused upon Rudolph. While this is not an exhaustive review of every photographer who has taken on that fascinating subject, it does show that an impressive range of talents have turned their attentions to Rudolph.

Above: Paul Rudolph’s bedroom, within his penthouse apartment. Below: an interior of the Modulightor Building. Photographs © Peter Aaron / OTTO, Archives of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

PETER AARON

Peter Aaron writes of his work: “I have been shooting architecture and interiors for thirty-five years. I started my career as a cinematographer, but consistently found myself more attracted to still photography. After working for designers Ward Bennett and Joseph d’Urso as they developed their High Tech style, I began a transformational apprenticeship with the great architectural photographer Ezra Stoller. After two years I began working on my own, adopting Ezra’s strong compositional approach while developing an individual style through the use of dramatic camera angles, theatrical lighting, and cinematic techniques. Since that time I have photographed structures by many of the most influential and groundbreaking architects of the last thirty years, including Robert A.M. Stern, Rem Koolhaas, Charles Gwathmey, Michael Graves, Peter Eisenman, Robert Venturi, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and Raphael Vinoly. I have been a contributing photographer for Architectural Digest and my images frequently appear in other magazines and books.” You can see an extensive selection of his work here, and learn about his recent book here.

AARON AND PAUL RUDOLPH: In 2018, the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation created two exhibits to celebrate Rudolph’s centenary, and also published corresponding catalogs for each. In preparation for these exhibits, while researching within our archives, we came across a beautiful image of Rudolph’s own bedroom within his Beekman Place Quadruplex penthouse—and that photograph was by Peter Aaron. We contacted Mr. Aaron and he graciously gave us permission to use the photograph. This opened up a dialogue with him, the result of which is that he has gone on to make light-filled photographs of the interiors of Paul Rudolph’s Modulightor Building (which you can see on that building’s project page.) Mr. Aaron has written of his goals: “As a photographer, my mission is to provide an image that’s a sort of ‘Platonic ideal’ of each structure, to show the building as the architect originally envisioned it…” —and we believe that his photographs of the work of Paul Rudolph are superb examples of the achievement of that aim.

One of the spectacular interiors of Paul Rudolph’s Deane Residence. Photograph © John Dessarzin

JOHN DESSARZIN

Mr. Dessarzin is a professional photographer of many decades experience, whose work has hardly been restricted to architectural subjects. As his impressive portfolio shows, his photography has focused on the human form, nature, news events, the famous and the anonymous, the foreign and the domestic—as well as architecture. Of that subject, he says: “At times [he pictures] the ineffable splendor in modern architecture as a haunting, commercial phantom among the iconic, storied skyscrapers of profit. In other instances, he presents ancient stone singularities as a charismatic existence that amply forges, but also devours human character in shades of ambivalence suggesting confused or decadent aspects of civilization.” Clearly, this is a photographer who is using his visual work to reach beyond the tangible to the ineffable—a commendable goal for any artist. You can learn more about him, and see his artistry in light and color, here.

DESSARZIN AND PAUL RUDOLPH: Paul Rudolph’s Deane Residence—a design he commenced at the end of the 1960’s—is known for its empathic use of structure, with geometrically composed framework expressed on both the exterior and interior. We came across a suite of photos of this dramatic design—images of spectacular color and drama—and it was the work of John Dessazin. He has graciously allowed us to include them on the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation’s project page for this house.

ED CHAPPELL

Ed Chappell, based in Florida, is a photographer with a special eye for the splendor of color in shooting architecture, fashion, landscape, and other subjects. He says of his work “I capture images. Make visions visible. Bring concepts to light. . . .I’m faced with challenges of every description—each of which calls for a unique solution, and all of which present the same demand: make it work. . . .You have to know the rules to break the rules, which may be exactly what is required. Experimentation and thinking ahead always pays off.” His website, here, displays a great range of his work.

CHAPPELL AND PAUL RUDOLPH: Paul Rudolph’s home in New York City, his “Quadruplex” penthouse, has been photographed a number of times. Perhaps the best article (with the most complete set of pictures) that has ever been published on it—as it looked the way that Rudolph had occupied and furnished it—was in a 2007 issue of Florida Design Review (and it was the cover story.) Richard Geary, a great admirer of Rudolph, wrote the text; and Ed Chappell did the photographs. The article conveys the sensual-layered composition of the spaces which Paul Rudolph created and in which he lived. Unfortunately, the Florida Design Review is no longer published, but you can still get a copy of that issue here.

A view of the opening spread of an article in an issue of Architectural Digest, in which Rudolph’s Deane Residence is profiled—with photographs by Cervin Robinson.

CERVIN ROBINSON

(1928-) One of the most celebrated of the second generation of great architectural photographers, Mr. Robinson was born in Boston, and started photographing at the age of 12. He attended Harvard University and in the 1950’s worked as an assistant to one of America’s most distinguished photographers, Walker Evans. He has said that “pictures of buildings seem to me as satisfying as pictures of people were frustrating”—and architectural photography became the focus of his long, creative, and prolific career. He traveled widely and has worked in a freelance capacity as a photographer for architects and design magazines since 1958—as well as himself being the author and illustrator of several books. Robinson’s work has been shown in many gallery and museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Ammon Carter, and the Philadelphia Museum. His website can be found here.

ROBINSON AND PAUL RUDOLPH: In a career that created some of the most dramatic formal solutions in Modern architecture, Paul Rudolph’s Deane Residence is among the most striking that he designed—famous for its rhythm of polygonal structural frames. Cervin Robinson photographed it for an article in Architectural Digest (with text by the late architect, Frank Israel). This master photographer was able to capture the variety of experiences inherent in this the house’s multi-level organization of overlapping spaces, and complex exterior geometries.

ANNIE SCHLECHTER

Ms. Schlechter says of herself and her work that she is “. . . .a native New Yorker who has been working as a photographer since 2000. Her clients include House Beautiful, New York Magazine, Better Homes & Gardens, Veranda, CN Traveler, The World of Interiors. Her commercial work ranges from hotel groups such as The Bowery Hotel and The Greenwich Hotel Group to designers and architects such as Marianna Kennedy, Chiarastella Cattana, Joe Serrins Studio, Inc Architecture & Design among others.” You can see Annie Schlechter’s splendid work here.

SCHLECHTER AND PAUL RUDOLPH: Ms. Schlechter collaborated with well-known writer Polly Devlin to create a book on amazing interiors in New York City—but, being largely private, these were spaces which the public had rarely or never known about or seen. The result was a book rich in story and color, “New York: Behind Closed Doors". They approached Ernst Wagner, the owner of the Paul Rudolph-designed Modulightor Building, about including it in the book—to which he not only agreed, but he also worked with them to provide the full background story, including Paul Rudolph’s intent for building, as well as Wagner’s reflections on it. Ms. Schlechter has graciously allowed the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation to include her photographs of the building and its interiors on their project page for the Modulightor Building.

The Modulightor Building—as seen in the evening, within its urban context. Photograph © Joe Polowczuk, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation Archives

JOE POLOWCZUK

Among the younger generation of design-focused photographers, those who have a sensibility that makes for great architectural images, is Joe Polowczuk. We may say “younger,”, but to look at his portfolio—which is full of variation in subject and varieties of visual delight—is to see someone with great experience and an exceptional eye for the possibilities of light. You can learn more about Joe, and see a beautiful selection of his work here—and you can read our article about him here (in which you can also see some of the photos he took of the exterior and interiors of Rudolph’s Modulightor Building).

POLOWCZUK AND PAUL RUDOLPH: In 2019, in cooperation with the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation, Joe made some luminous photographs of Paul Rudolph’s Modulightor Building, as well as the Rolling Chair that was also designed by Rudolph for use in his own penthouse home.

Ms. Broder captured the sense of deep space and spreading light, within one of the upper floors of the Modulightor Building. Photograph © Anne Broder, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation Archives

ANN BRODER

Anne Broder is a photographer who works both in the professional world, making photographs of interiors with an unerring eye for composition and color, and also uses photography to create moving artistic images of architecture, sculpture, and abstract forms. Of her work, she says “Today, I freelance as a real estate photographer and work the camera for architects, interior designers, retail shops, portraiture and for my own joy of photography.” You can see her beautiful work here.

BRODER AND PAUL RUDOLPH: Ann. Broder had become aware of the light-filled and varied spaces of Paul Rudolph’s Modulightor Building in New York City—a project that Rudolph had commenced in 1988. She approached us about photographing the building, and we were delighted to have Ms. Broder bring her eye and skills for recording this amazing building (especially, but not limited to, the recently finished uppermost floors of the building.)

An interior of Paul Rudolph’s penthouse apartment, in its current state. Photograph © Francis Dzikowski / OTTO, Archives of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

FRANCIS DZIKOWSKI

Mr. Dzikowski writes of his himself and his work that he “. . . .attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute’s foundation program in architecture and studied photography at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. He spent a decade living and traveling abroad photographing historical restoration projects and archaeological excavations. While photographing in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings for the Theban Mapping Project, Francis also taught photography at the American University in Cairo. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York working as an architectural and interiors photographer. In 2009 he completed publication of a book titled, Public Art New York. . . .” You can see his work here, and learn more abut his book here.

DZIKOWSKI AND PAUL RUDOLPH: Paul Rudolph’s own home in New York City, his “Quadruplex”, has been photographed at various times over the decades. But it has been relatively inaccessible in recent years—so it was a great delight when the building’s current owners allowed the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation to visit it at the beginning of 2020. Francis Dzikowkski was present during that visit, creating a vivid portfolio of images to document the current state of that fascinating set of spaces.

A middle-distant view of a side elevation of the Burroughs Wellcome building, stately sitting within North Carolina’s landscape. Photograph © PJ McDonnell, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation Archives

P. J. McDONNELL

Mr. McDonnell, who is based in North Carolina, says of himself: “I am a photographer, originally from New Jersey. I came across the Burroughs Wellcome building while browsing maps of the Research Triangle. Learning about the building is what sparked my interest and appreciation for Paul Rudolph's work.” You can see more of his photography—which certainly displays his strong interest in architecture, but which also embraces other visually fascinating subjects—on his Instagram page, here.

McDONNELL AND PAUL RUDOLPH: We came to really appreciate the work of P. J. McDonnell during our current campaign to save the Burroughs Wellcome building in North Carolina. The building had been the US headquarters and research center of the pharmaceutical giant, but it is now under threat of demolition. While the most familiar and frequently published published images of the building show it pristine and new, P. J. McDonnell’s photographs—made much more recently—show it in its current state. These powerful images share with us a building which, while needing work, also shows that great architecture can always maintain its power and dignity. McDonnell states “Like all of his work, the Burroughs Wellcome building is otherworldly, awe inspiring, and a one-of-a-kind building that could never be replaced.”

Rudolph And His Architectural Photographers — PART ONE

A compelling photo by G. E. Kidder Smith of Paul Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome US headquarters and research center, shown near the time of the building’s completion. Here, the photographer gives us an image which simultaneously captures the architecture’s play of volumes, structural and geometric adventurousness, aspects of its siting, and scale. Photo courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

PHOTOGRAPHIC POWER

What’s more important: a great building -or- a great photograph of it?

It’s an impossible question to answer—not because of its difficulty, but rather: because the question itself attempts to compare such different entities. The “actuality” of architecture—the way one would come to know a building, in-person, by entering and moving through it and experiencing the spaces sequentially (truly a four-dimensional phenomenon), and also through other senses (sound and touch)—is wholly different from the way that one takes-in the information embodied in a two-dimensional photograph.

Then how are architectural photographs important?

The answer: in their potential for influence.

ENDURING AND WIDESPREAD INFLUENCE

No matter how many people see a building in-person, an uncalculable greater number can see it in photographs—-and those viewings continue onward, even if the building ceases to exist.

Probably the most famous case is Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion. It was built for a 1929 international exposition, and—from the time of its inauguration-to- its demolition—it only existed for less than a year. Since then, it has been known from a handful of photographs and its plan.

Mies’ Barcelona Pavilion, was built in 1929 and demolished within the following year. Of the handful of photographs recording what it looked like when extant, this is probably the most famous image.

Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion of 1929 was built for an international exposition. It is preponderantly known only through a handful of photographs and two drawings (the plan, above, and a detail of a typical column.) Yet on the strength of this small group of images, it gained—and retains!—world-class status as one of the ultimate icons of architectural Modernism.

Of that small group of photographs, the most famous image is probably the one shown above. Those photos, combined with the plan drawing, have been included in countless books, articles, lectures, curricula—-and, even more important: they’ve become integrated into the thinking of every Modern architect. [We’ve written here about Rudolph’s own interest in the Barcelona Pavilion, and also here about his relationship to Mies’ work.] Now, coming-up on a century since it’s demolition, this iconic building continues to resonate through architectural education, scholarship, and practice— mainly because of photographs.

Further: try as we may to visit the great, iconic examples of architecture, they are just too dispersed. So even a devoted architectural traveler could spend decades just trying to see most of them. So, practically speaking, we have to experience and learn about most of of the world’s architecture from photographs.

THE GREAT PHOTOGRAPHERS OF MODERN ARCHIECTURE—CREATING THE ICONS WE REMEMBER

The 20th and early 21st centuries have been graced with architectural photographers that can be considered “artists-in-their-own-right”. That’s because they’ve not only been able to capture the formal essence of architectural works, but—like visual alchemists—they have also created images which (through their choices of point-of-view, lighting, focus, and composition) have virtually created the vital identities of those buildings.

Prime examples would be the powerful photo that Ezra Stoller took of Paul Rudolph’s Yale Art & Architecture Building—it’s the image we “have in our head” when we think of the building; Yukio Futagawa’s chroma-rich capturing of the interior of Rudolph’s Tuskegee Chapel; and Balthazar Korab’s photos of the soaring wings of Saarinen’s TWA “Flight Center” terminal at Kennedy Airport. To many of us, those images are the building.

Ezra Stoller’s photograph of the exterior of Paul Rudolph’s Yale Art & Architecture Building became the iconic image of it—and it’s included on the cover of his book on that famous building.

Each issue of Futagawa’s journal, GA (Global Architecture) focused on one or two buildings. This one is on Rudolph’s Tuskegee Chapel and Boston Govt. Service Center—and Tuskegee is on the cover.

Balthazar Korab photographed a number of designs by Eero Saarinen, including the TWA terminal for Kennedy airport. His photographic work on that project ranged from recording the Saarinen office’s working models, to construction photos (like the one above), to the finished building. Even in its construction stage, when it was only raw concrete, Korab was able to capture the drama of the building. Photo courtesy of the Balthazar Korab Photographic Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

RUDOLPH AND HIS PHOTOGRAPHERS

Paul Rudolph worked with some of the century’s greatest architectural photographers—the ones who are celebrated for working with the leading figures in the world of architectural Modernism. While Rudolph might have been directly involved with some photographers—commissioning them, or requesting that they focus on certain aspects of a building—in other cases, even without Rudolph’s involvement, great photographers have been engaged (by others) to shoot his work; or have done so just out of their own interest in his oeuvre.

While not exhaustive, we’ll review a round-up of many of the photographers who have been focused on the work of Paul Rudolph—and we’ll do this in two parts:

• PART ONE (this article) looks at the great architectural photographers of the early-to-late 20th Century, who have worked on Rudolph’s oeuvre.

• PART TWO will look at photographers—most still very active—who have more recently focused on Rudolph’s work.

EZRA STOLLER

(1915-2004) When one thinks of architectural photography in America, the name—or rather: the images—of Ezra Stoller are what probably first come to mind. For decades, he photographed many of the 20th Century’s most significant new buildings in the US (by the country’s premier architects), thereby creating an archive of the achievements of Modern American Architecture. More than that, Stoller’s views are some of the most iconic images of that era.

STOLLER AND PAUL RUDOLPH: Of the several photographers that Rudolph worked with, Ezra Stoller is probably the one with which he had the most involvement and lasting relationship. Stoller photographed much of his residential work in Florida—including some of Rudolph’s greatest and most innovative houses like the Milam Residence (as seen on the over of Domin and King’s book on the Florida phase of Rudolph’s career—see image at right), the Walker Guest House, the Umbrella House, and the Healy “Cocoon” House—the Yale Art & Architecture Building in New Haven, Sarasota Senior High School, the Temple Street Parking Garage in New Haven, Endo Labs, the UMass Dartmouth campus, Tuskegee Chapel in Alabama, the Hirsch (later: “Halston”) townhouse in New York City , the Wallace House, Riverview High School in Florida, the Sanderling Beach Club in Florida, and numerous others—including the Burroughs Wellcome US headquarters and research center in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. One can access the extensive and fascinating archive of Ezra Stoller’s work (including the Rudolph projects that he photographed) here—and an extensive selection from throughout Stoller’s career (including numerous images of Rudolph’s work) can be viewed in the book “Ezra Stoller, Photographer” (see cover at right).

The first monograph on Rudolph which featured extensive color photography, all of which was done by Futagawa.

YUKIO FUTAGAWA

(1932-2015) The dean of architectural photography in Japan, and with a world-wide reputation, for over six decades Futagawa made magnificent and memorable photos of important buildings (new and traditional) around the world. Interestingly, he created his own “platform” to publish his work: he founded GA (“Global Architecture”), GH (“Global Houses”), and published other series and individual books. Those contained not only of photography, but also architectural drawings and full project documentation of distinguished works of architecture.

FUTAGAWA AND PAUL RUDOLPH: Futagawa traveled the US to make the photographs for the monograph, “Paul Rudolph” (part of the Library of Contemporary Architects series published by Simon and Schuster)—and the archives of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation posseses a note by Rudolph, testifying to his appreciation of Futagawa’s work. In the GA series, he published one on the Tuskegee Chapel and the Boston Government Service Center. Futagawa extensively photographed the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and, as part of the GA series, he asked Rudolph to contribute the introductory essay to the issue on Wright’s Fallingwater. He also published the large monograph on Rudolph’s graphic works (copiously including his famous perspective drawings): Paul Rudolph: Architectural Drawings.

Kidder Smith’s two-volume “A Pictorial History of Architecture in America,” published in 1976, includes Rudolph’s work. Below: one of his photographs of the Niagara Falls Central Library, taken near the time of its completion. Photo courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

G. E. KIDDER SMITH

(1913-1997) Along with the other ultra-prominent names we’ve been mentioning, in the world of architectural photography, we must include G. E. (George Everard) Kidder Smith. Trained as an architect, Kidder Smith was not only a photographer of architecture, but also an historian-writer, exhibit designer, and preservationist (helping to save/preserve the Robie House and the Villa Savoye.) His numerous books are still important resources for anyone doing research on the architecture of America and Europe His series of “Build” books (“Brazil Builds” “Italy Builds” “Switzerland Builds” “Sweden Builds”) provide abundant images and information about the rise of Modern architecture in each of those countries.

KIDDER SMITH AND PAUL RUDOLPH: Kidder Smith’s “A Pictorial History of Architecture in America” is a 2-volume work that was published in 1976, and—utilizing the photographs that Kidder Smith had made—it covers all eras of American architectural history, region-by-region. Kidder Smith must have admired Paul Rudolph’s work, for it shows up throughout this major, encyclopedic work, and includes: Rudolph’s Boston Government Service Center, Tuskegee Chapel, Niagara Falls Central Library, UMass Dartmouth, the Orange County Government Center—and Burroughs Wellcome (whose double-page spread image is the photographic climax at the end of Volume One.). This set of buildings are of particular poignance and and meaning to us, as they include a major Rudolph building that has been altered/disfigured (Orange County); and three which are currently threatened (Boston, Niagara Falls, and Burroughs Wellcome.)—and we are using Kidder Smith’s images to help fight for their preservation.

This monograph from 1984 shows work from the several generations of photographers who have worked for Hedrich-Blessing, and the book includes an image of Paul Rudolph’s Christian Science Student Center. An even larger monograph of Hedrich-Blessing’s work was published in 2000, which also included that photo of Rudolph’s building.

HEDRICH-BLESSING

(1929-Present) The other photographers of Rudolph’s work, mentioned in this article, were primarily based on or towards the US’ East Coast. But for the middle of the country, the kings of architectural photography were Hedrich-Blessing. The firm was founded in 1929 by Ken Hedrich and Henry Blessing and—though based in Chicago and famous for photographs of buildings in that region—they have done work all over. Among the distinguished architects, whose work they photographed, were: Wright, Mies, Raymond Hood, Keck and Keck, Albert Kahn, Adler & Sullivan, SOM, Harry Weese, Breuer, Saarinen, Gunnar Birkets, Yamasaki, and Alden Dow. Since its founding, the firm has employed several generations of photographers, and is still very much active today.

HEDRICH-BLESSING AND PAUL RUDOLPH: To our present knowledge, Hedrich-Blessing did not photograph many of Paul Rudolph’s buildings. [Perhaps because Rudolph did not build much in their part of the country. That may have been different had Rudolph become dean of IIT’s School of Architecture in Chicago—an offer he briefly considered.] We do know of at least one superb photo Hedrich-Blessing took of his Christian Science Student Center. This building, which Rudolph designed in 1962 near the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, was unfortunately demolished in the mid-1980’s. So it is important that we have Hedrich-Blessing’s photograph, which was taken by their staff photographer Bill Engdahl in 1966: it shows the building at night: dramatically shadowed on the outside, but enticingly glowing from within.

Above: Shulman’s extensive oeuvre is documented in a three-volume monograph published by Taschen. Below: One of Shulman’s photographs of Rudolph’s Temple Street Parking Garage. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)

JULIUS SHULMAN

(1910-2009) Shulman was an almost exact contemporary of some of the other legendary architectural photographers on this list (i.e.: Stoller and Kidder Smith), and his professional career extended over 7 decades—from the 1930’s into the 2000’s. The body of work for which he is most well known is the large set of photographs he took of Modern architecture in California—centered in Los Angeles, but extending to cover buildings in other parts of the state. His clients included some of the most famous makers of Modern architecture: Pierre Koenig (for whom he took a night time photo of the Stalh House which became the iconic emblem of modern living in Southern California,) Neutra, Wright, Soriano, the Eames, and John Lautner. Christopher Hawthorne, of the Los Angeles Times, said of his work: “His famous black-and-white photographs. . . .were not just, as [Thomas] Hines noted, marked by clarity and high contrast. They were also carried aloft by a certain airiness of spirit, a lively confidence that announced that Los Angeles was the place where architecture was being sharpened and throwing off sparks from its daily contact with the cutting edge.” Shulman also had commissions in other parts of the country, as in: his photographs of Lever House in New York, a house by Paolo Soleri in Arizona, and work by Mies in Chicago—and he worked internationally, for example: photographing a residence by Lautner in Mexico. He authored 7 books, participated in 10 others, and his extensive archive is in the Getty Research Institute.

SHULMAN AND PAUL RUDOLPH: While Julius Shulman is identified with the photography of key examples of architectural Modernism in California, he also took assignments for other locations, and his images of Paul Rudolph’s works in New Haven are strong examples of Shulman’s image making. Several can be seen on the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation’s project pages for the Temple Street Parking Garage, and the Yale Married Students Housing. The photographs of the garage are intense with visual drama, highlighting its scale and sculptural qualities.

Above: Molitor’s photo of UMass Dartmouth. Below: Niagara Falls Central Library. Images courtesy of Columbia University, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Joseph W. Molitor Photograph Collection

JOSEPH W. MOLITOR

(1907-1996)  We are fortunate that the the Joseph W. Molitor Photograph Collection is now part of the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, where it is made available to scholars, researchers, writers, and students. The Avery Library describes Molitor and his career: “Joseph Molitor, recognized as a peer of such leading 20th-century American architectural photographers as Hedrich-Blessing, Balthazar Korab, Julius Shulman, and Ezra Stoller, documented the work of regional and national architects for fifty years. Trained as an architect, he practiced for twelve years before briefly working in advertising. Molitor turned exclusively to architectural photography in the late 1940s, maintaining his studio in suburban Westchester County, New York. Working primarily in black and white, Molitor's images appeared in Architectural Record, The New York Times, House & Home, and other national and international publications.”

MOLITOR AND PAUL RUDOLPH: Avery’s text also mentions “His iconic photograph of a walkway at architect Paul Rudolph’s high school in Sarasota, Florida, won first place in the black and white section of the American Institute of Architects’ architectural photography awards in 1960.” You can find Joseph Molitor’s photographs on several of the project pages within the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation’s website, including the pages devoted to the Milam Residence in Florida, and the Niagara Falls Central Library—and his book, Architectural Photography, published in 1976, features an abundance of images of Rudolph’s work. Recently, the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation has been focused upon Molitor’s work because of the endlessly intriguing set of photographs he made of the Burroughs Wellcome building—showing them with a crispness and sense of drama that few other photographers have approached.

Above and Below: two of Henry L. Kamphoefner’s photographs of interiors within the Burroughs Wellcome building in North Carolina—both images displaying the striking geometries which Rudolph used in the design.

HENRY L. KAMPHOEFNER

(1907-1990) Unlike the above figures, Henry Leveke Kamphoefner is not primarily known as an architectural photographer—but he was well-known in the South as a champion of Modern architecture, especially in North Carolina. Graduating from the Univ. of Illinois with a BS degree in architecture in 1930, in the following years he received a MS in architecture from Columbia and a Certificate of Architecture from the Beaux Arts Institute of Design in New York. From 1932 until 1936, he practiced architecture privately, and one of his most well-known works is a municipal bandshell Sioux City (which was selected by the Royal Institute of British Architects as one of "America's Outstanding Buildings of the Post-War Period.") In 1936 and 1937, he worked as an associate architect for the Rural Resettlement Administration, and during summers after that he was was employed as an architect for the US Navy. He had an ongoing and significant involvement with architectural education: in 1937 he became a professor at the Univ. of Oklahoma and during 1947 was also a visiting professor at the Univ. of Michigan. In 1948 Kamphoefner became the first dean of the North Carolina State College School of Design, creating strict admissions policies and instituting a distinguished visitors program which brought in architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright. He remained dean until 1973, but continued teaching until 1979. From 1979 to 1981 he served as a distinguished visiting professor at Meredith College. Kamphoefner’s importance has been highlighted in a new book, Triangle Modern Architecture, by Victoria Ballard Bell.

KAMPHOEFNER AND PAUL RUDOLPH: The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation has included several of Kamphoefner’s photographs of the Burroughs Wellcome US headquarters and research center on its project page for that building. It is natural that, as a resident of North Carolina, and as an advocate for Modern architecture, that he would be focused on that building. His photographs of the interiors highlight the striking diagonal geometries that Paul Rudolph incorporated into the project. We have included his images of Burroughs Wellcome in several of our blog articles, as part of our fight to preserve this great work of architecture.

COMING SOON: PART TWO

Be sure to look for PART TWO of this study of Paul Rudolph And His Architectural Photographers. It which will look the more recently active photographers, each of whom have focused on the work of Paul Rudolph.

Design at the Largest Scale: Paul Rudolph as Urban Designer

Pantai Timur Surabaya: the design for a proposed new town for 250,000 people—a 1990 urban planning project by Paul Rudolph, to be located in Surabaya, the capital of the province of East Java in Indonesia. This city center drawing is one of several which Rudolph prepared for the project. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

WHAT WAS RUDOLPH? — HIS MULTIPLE ROLES

Rudolph is thought of in many ways—but urban designer is not often among the categories with which he’s linked. Yet he was intensely engaged—both intellectually and practically—in urban design. Here he’s shown, at far right, with key players in the development of the Boston Government Service Center, surrounding an architectural model of the complex—one of Rudolph’s strongest urban interventions.

Our ongoing research shows that Rudolph was many things. If you met him, he’d probably introduce himself as an architect (and in interviews he referred to himself as such)—but if one looks at his half-century career, what emerges are the multiple roles he played, both as a prolific professional, and in the lives of those with whom he interacted:

• Architect— with well over 300 commissions, across the US and internationally, designing in a variety of building types and scales

• Interior Designer— both as an aspect of his architectural projects, and as separate commissions

• Furniture Designer— whether as built-ins or as freestanding units, Rudolph created numerous furniture designs for many of his buildings and interiors

• Lighting Designer— virtually obsessed by light, Rudolph custom-designed light fixtures for individual projects; and later co-founded the Modulightor lighting company—for which he designed their line of lighting products and systems

• Educator— at first, as guest lecturer or instructor at numerous schools; and later as the the Chair of Yale’s School of Architecture, where he revised and energized the school’s curriculum, staff, culture, and environment

• Writer and Lecturer— although Rudolph worked on more-than-one book project, none were published in his lifetime—but he did speak in public, was interviewed, and published a number of illuminating articles in which he shared his thinking

• Mentor— his former students and employees have testified to the power of Paul Rudolph’s example—as well as Rudolph’s ongoing, contributory relationships with them

• Artist and Patron— creating murals for selected commissions, or working with artists whose artworks were integrated into his buildings

But where, in this broad list of his roles and engagements, is URBAN DESIGN?

Rudolph repeatedly focused his thinking, writing, and speeches on urban design—and judging from the way the topic keeps recurring in his public statements, it may well have been his most compelling concern. So it’s time that we consider Rudolph’s work as an urban designer.

PAUL RUDOLPH aND URBAN DESIGN: FOUR MODES

Rudolph’s’ engagement with urban design took several forms, scales and types—and it can be clarifying to categorize them into four modes:

1. URBAN DESIGN THINKING/PRIORITIES

2. URBAN INTERVENTIONS

3. COMMUNITY PLANNING

4. CAMPUS PLANNING

There are multiple manifestations of his work in each of these domains, and we offer some examples below (though this is not an exhaustive list of his ventures in each category).

1. URBAN DESIGN THINKING/PRIORITIES

Rudolph wrote & lectured throughout his career. This anthology, edited by Nina Rappaport, contains essays by him, interviews, and copies of his speeches. Numerous of those texts reveal his thinking on urban design.

Timothy Rohan’s monograph, on the life and career of Paul Rudolph, looked deeply into Rudolph’s urban design philosophy. In an important journal article, and in the book, he characterized Rudolph’s approach as “Scenographic Urbanism.”

Rudolph thought about what was wrong—and could be changed, improved, and fixed in our cities. Further, he was emphatic about what was missing in the Modern Movement’s approach urban design. He expressed his observations and thoughts in numerous speeches, writings, and interviews.

Key urban design issues for Rudolph, to which he kept returning, were:

• The importance of the urban context, and seeing that even the most cleverly designed building is a part of larger whole. As Rudolph expressed it: “We think of buildings in and of themselves. That isn’t any good at all. That’s not the way it is, not the way it has ever been, not the way it will ever be. Buildings are absolutely and completely dependent on what’s around them.” -and- “Every building not matter how large or small, is part of the urban design.”

• The existence (new to human history) of the automobile—and the need to work with that fact. But Rudolph was not speaking of just giving-in to the auto’s voracious demands for routes and resources (‘though he knew we’d have to deal with those practical matters). Rather: he was pointing to the new ways that we experience streets, architecture, and space when traveling in a car, and at speeds which citizens had never before known.

• Coincident with that are the changes in the scale of the structures that were newly being constructed—works of a size unimagined by past ages. Of this he said: “Things are quite chaotic. We are faced with a vast change of scale, new building forms which have not really been investigated, and the compulsions of the automobile. When faced with the truly new, the serious architect must search for solutions equally dramatic.”

• The need for variety with intensity, when shaping urban space. He expressed this point in this memorable passage: “We desperately need to relearn the art of disposing our buildings to create different kinds of space: the quiet, enclosed, isolated, shaded space; the hustling, bustling space, pungent with vitality; the paved, dignified, vast, sumptuous, even awe-inspiring space; the mysterious space; the transition space which defines, separates, and yet joins juxtaposed spaces of contrasting character. We need sequences of space which arouse one’s curiosity, give a sense of anticipation, which beckon and impel us to rush forward to find that releasing space which dominates, which acts as a climax and magnet, and gives direction.”

A deeper look into Rudolph’s thinking on urban design—and how he put those ideas into practice—can be found by reading his own words (in the book of his writings), and in the monographs on his career.

2. URBAN INTERVENTIONS—PROPOSED AND BUILT

Sometimes architects and planners get to work in “clean slate”, tabular rasa locations: sites where there is a relative lack of constraints about how a project is to be shaped, and what design decisions can be made. But that’s the minority of situations which architects urban designers find themselves in, and the preponderance of their work is within existing contexts which simultaneously pose multiple, convoluted, and intractable problems.

In such cases, some designers look at their work as “interventions”—a term more familiar from the cultures of medicine or therapy. But the concept has become a useful addition to the design discourse, as it can help designers to think—with clarity and responsibility—about the the limits of what should be done, the power(s) available to make change, and what is just and appropriate to propose or do.

Below are three examples of Rudolph’s urban design work, which could be characterized as “interventions":

Architectural Forum’s January 1963 issue Image courtesy of USModernist Library

RUDOLPH: A WASHINGTON INTERVENTION

John F. Kennedy, during his presidential inauguration auto ride in Washington, noticed the tawdry state of the capital’s most prominent streets and avenues—and asked/urged that action be taken to transform the city, so that it would live-up to its status as the capital city of the world’s most powerful free nation. This brought focus to the state of the city, and Architectural Forum devoted an entire issue to the design Washington, DC.

Architectural Forum, up until it ceased publication in 1974, was one of the US’ three major professional architectural journals, and was known for its “eye”: publishing some of the most interesting new buildings and interiors from around the world—and also for exploring the controversial issues of the day (and looking at their architectural and urban design implications). Thus it makes sense that they’d asked Paul Rudolph—the dynamic Chair of Yale’s School of Architecture, a prolific and creative designer, and a young star of the profession—to participate in looking at Washington, and proposing what might be done to fix it’s design problems while enhancing the city’s existing assets.

Paul Rudolph’s article, in that Washington-focused Architectural Forum issue, was titled “A View of Washington As A Capital—Or What Is Civic Design?” He reviewed the initial intentions of the city’s layout, as conceived by Pierre Charles L’Enfant (the original planner of the city, who’d received the assignment from George Washington)—and looked at the developing history of the city, the importance of density, the use of monuments, the state of official architecture, and the condition of major avenues and the Mall. He then offered suggestions on redeveloping a portion of Capitol Hill and the overall reorganization of that important central area.

Paul Rudolph’s article, in that Washington-focused issue of Architectural Forum, included this image: an aerial photograph of downtown DC, on which Rudolph drew his ideas for improving this part of the city. He focused here on the Capitol, the Mall, and surrounding buildings and key axes—and suggesting interventions that would increase the coherence of the ensemble. Image courtesy of USModernist Library

RUDOLPH: A NEW YORK INTERVENTION

Paul Rudolph’s LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway) project was intended to address issues of cross-town traffic—but Rudolph took it to another level, with a visionary (if controversial) proposal: an intervention that would have transformed life in that southern section of the city. His design would have integrated transportation (of several kinds), housing, other building-function-types, and services—all within an innovatively shaped and planned infrastructure, and using a prefabricated modular construction system for the housing units. Of his proposal, Rudolph asserted:

“A conventional urban expressway might very well be more abusive to the city. On the other hand, building a new type of urban corridor designed in relation to the city districts through which it passes and engineered in such a way as to be capable of dissolving traffic and diminishing noise, exhaust, environmental and surface-street problems that have plagued the corridor area for decades might just be the most desirable approach.”

In Rudolph’s LOMEX drawing above, the routes between bridges at the edges of New York City’s Manhattan island are shown, surmounted by a titanic building project of housing and other building types. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

An important part of Rudolph’s concept for LOMEX was the housing system. Individual apartments, which he called “the brick of the future”: were to be manufactured and trucked to the site, and lifted into place onto structural towers. One can see several such tower assemblies in this model of a portion of LOMEX. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

LOMEX would have integrated housing with pedestrian, train, and automotive movement, and a full range of services needed to allow them to all function. All this was to be accommodated within a megastructure that was to span the width of Manhattan, as shown here in Rudolph’s perspective-section drawing. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

RUDOLPH: A BOSTON INTERVENTION

The BOSTON GOVERNMENT SERVICE CENTER is situated on a large triangular site, and was envisioned as a part of Boston’s downtown “Government Center” (whose other prominent Modern structure is the Boston City Hall.) About 2/3 of the complex was built in the way that Rudolph envisioned it. Within a set of muscular and sculptural concrete buildings are housed state offices offering varied services. The buildings enclose a quiet plaza, which was meant to be a peaceful respite in the city as well as part of the building’s entry sequence.

The size, location, and complexity of such a large complex was bound to have an effect on the adjacent parts of the city—and Rudolph thought carefully about its urban design aspects, and shaped and scaled the buildings based on his observations of Boston.

Here is some of his thinking about the design, taken from various public statements and interviews:

“The three buildings are purposely designed so that they form a specific space for pedestrians only and read as a single entity rather than three separate buildings. In terms of urban design, this is undoubtedly one of the first concerted efforts to unify a group of buildings that this country has seen in a number of years.”

“The irregular and complex form [of the plaza] is derived primarily from the irregular street pattern of Boston.”

“The generating ideas of most traditional cities are pedestrian and vehicular circulation, streets, squares, terminuses, with their space clearly defined by buildings. This means linked buildings united to form comprehensible exterior spaces. The Boston Government Service Center is the opposite of Le Corbusier’s dictum “down with the street.” It started with three separate buildings, their clients, architects and methods of financing. We didn’t build three separate buildings, as others had proposed, but one continuous building which defined the street, formed a pedestrian plaza. . . .The scale of the lower buildings was heightened at the exterior perimeter (street) so that it read in conjunction with automobile traffic (columns 60-70 feet high plus toilet and stair cores at the corners were used). The scale at the plaza was much more intimate using stepped floors which revealed each floor level, making a bowl of space. As one approaches the stepped six-story-high building it reduces itself to only one story. . . .”

Progressive Architecture published a 1964 article on the design for the Boston Government Service Center. LEFT: the opening page, featuring a photo looking down into a model of the full-block complex, which encloses a pedestrian plaza—and, below, the editors included intriguing comparison images of urban plazas in Sienna and Venice. Image courtesy USModernist Library. ABOVE: a site plan of the complex (circled in Red) and adjacent streets in Boston. For a comparison of scale, the Boston City Hall—itself a building of significant size—is shown at the lower-right (the rectangle circled in Blue.)

3. COMMUNITY DESIGN

There are several examples of Rudolph taking-on the design of whole communities, whether it be a new town, a new neighborhood, or a development so large that it could legitimately be considered a work that engages urban design challenges.

Probably the largest such assignment that he worked on was the design of new town in Indonesia for 250,000, people. Had it been built, it would have been a sizable new settlement—and below are drawings for that project.

Below that are several other projects where Rudolph is working at a large, urban scale—both with respect to the populations that would have been housed, and/or the geographical area that was to be covered.

Paul Rudolph’s Phase One study for the city center of Pantai Timur Surabaya—a proposed town for a quarter-million people in Indonesia. While this project never proceeded into construction, the urban ideas which it embodied are well worth studying. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Above is a further drawing by Rudolph—a site plan sketch—from his town planning project for the Pantai Timur Surabaya in Indonesia. Note: Larger versions of these drawings (this one, and the drawing at left) can be seen on the project page, here. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Buffalo’s Shoreline Apartments was a housing complex designed in 1969, a portion of which was completed in 1974. The full scheme (partially shown in the above model) included terraced high-rises around a marina, school and community center facilities, and low and mid-rise apartment buildings and townhouses, with green spaces woven through the site. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

A federally aided project in the late 60’s, designed to solve housing shortages in New Haven, Oriental Masonic Gardens offered 148 units of housing, ranging from 2-to-5 bedrooms. An attempt at bringing prefabrication to the housing crisis, the homes were made from 333 modules, placed in configurations that provided a separate outside space for each family. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

To be situated in the North-West portion of Washington, DC, the Fort Lincoln Housing project from 1968 was designed to be woven into the existing urban context, providing abundant (and much needed) housing, and offering a variety of apartment types. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

In 1974 Rudolph received a commission for an immense Apartment Hotel (a.k.a. the JERUSALEM HOTEL), which would have encompassed over 300 units, plus the many facilities to support them—all under a multitude of stone-clad, concrete barrel-vaults. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Comprising a master plan, and the design for townhouses, apartment houses, a hotel and boatel, and commercial spaces, Rudolph’s mid-60’s Stafford Harbor resort project in Virginia was the first time he’d ever worked on the planning of an entire town. Designed to take full advantage of its waterside location, it embraced the site’s existing topography. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Rudolph’s 1967 Graphic Arts Center project would have included 4,000 prefabricated apartment units, as well as spaces for a multiplicity of other functions. Stretching into the Hudson River, its vast scale can be perceived by comparing it with the World Trade Center complex, whose site plan (including the WTC’s two square towers) is shown at the right edge of the drawing. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

4. CAMPUS PLANNING: DISTILLED URBAN DESIGN

A large portion of Paul Rudolph’s oeuvre were educational buildings, done at all levels—from an elementary school to designing spaces for advanced research. Many were stand-alone buildings, but Rudolph was always aware (and respectful of) context. Even his most famous work, the Yale Art & Architecture Building (which has been cited as the paradigmatic example of individualism in design) is an example of Rudolph’s careful consideration of the setting—and one can see this in his drawings for the building, which purposefully showed the proposed design as it was to be situated within New Haven’s urban context.

More directly pertinent are his designs for whole campuses. The campus of a university, college, or educational institute has to simultaneously fulfill multiple functions: housing classrooms, laboratories, arts and athletic facilities, administrative space, a library, and—literally—housing for students (and sometimes faculty as well). Moreover, efficient and pleasant connections and travel between the buildings which house these activities—via interior and exterior routes—must be integrated into the plan. Finally, an oft-stated client goal is that the ensemble has a look of unity, so as to promote a sense of shared campus identity.

Accommodating such planning complexity, within a distinct area, is a concentrated version of an urban design problem—a distillation of trying to design a small city. Rudolph was commissioned to take on this challenge by several institutions, both across the US and internationally—with interesting results and in highly varying forms. Below are examples of his work in this domain.

The Tuskegee Chapel, of 1960, was one of the works for which Rudolph is most famed. But, over the decades, he was engaged by Tuskegee Institute for other buildings and purposes—for example: in 1958 they asked him to do the above Master Plan for the campus. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

If having “repeat customers” is the sign client happiness, then Tuskegee must have found Paul Rudolph quite satisfying to work with—a manifestation of which would be this 1978 commission to him for a Tuskegee Master Plan and College Entrance. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

The planning of the new campus for Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute—now UMass Dartmouth—commenced in 1963, and design work and construction continued over many years (and is ongoing). A pedestrian campus with an encircling parking system, it was conceived as a series of extended buildings based on a single structural-mechanical system, to be constructed of one material. A spiraling mall, created by the buildings, organizes the heart of the complex. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

The East Pakistan Agricultural University, south of the district town of Mymensingh (now Bangladesh Agricultural University) was a project from the middle 1960’s. It included a master plan to expand the existing campus, and the design of buildings for a full range of functions: auditorium, dormitories, laboratories, instructional spaces, and recreation facilities. A portion of Rudolph’s designs were constructed. Part of the model, for the overall design, is shown above. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

THE CONTEXT OF PAST AND CURRENT URBAN DESIGN THINKING, PLANNING, AND BUILDING

Paul Rudolph placed immense importance on urban design, and that necessitates being an astute and careful observer—as he Rudolph was—of the life and shaping of cities.

Cites are pivotal: the rise of civilization and cities go together, so a deep consideration of their forms is essential—and even pre (or non) urban settlements can have formal structures and layout rules of great civil sophistication.

This history—of the evolution and multiplicity of the forms cities have taken, and the forces which guided their shaping—is of enormous complexity, as is the literature which has been focused on these greatest of human artifacts. Influential books have been published (and continue to be) on urban design—often with implicit or outright declarations on how city-making should move forward. Among the most prominent have been Edmund Bacon’s Design of Cities, Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City, Rudofsky’s Streets for People, and works by Le Corbusier, Jacobs, Buras, Koolhaas, Howard, Rossi, and Mumford.

These authors/researchers/designers make profound contributions to our understanding of urban design—both as history and as lessons for today’s practice. But few offer the comprehensive, encyclopedic view of urban design history and form as to be found in a newly issued book: Urban Grids: Handbook for Regular City Design.

The result of a titanic 8-year study, and the work of an army-sized team of researchers and designers, this single volume is a deep review of urban design history, theory and practice—but the real value of the book is in its “case study” approach: comparing dozens of cities, world-wide, on the basis of their geometry, density, block configuration, street width and street-wall height, relation to topography, mix of uses, integration of various transport modes, growth patterns, and other factors. Over hundreds of pages, utilizing thousands of illustrations, this one volume makes available and synthesizes a body of information daunting in its richness and complexity—and will become an indispensable tool for all concerned with urban design.

Two adjacent pages from the book, on which the case studies of two cities—Algiers and Alexandria—are compared utilizing numerous diagrams and data.

A further spread from the book, from a section in which the history and evolution of urban design—including grid layouts—is explored.

BOOK INFORMATION AND AVAILABILITY:

• TITLE: Urban Grids: Handbook for Regular City Design

• AUTHORS: Joan Busquets, Dingliang Yang, and Michael Keller

• PUBLISHER: ORO Editions

• PRINT FORMAT: Hardcover, 8-1/2” x 12'“

• PAGE COUNT & ILLUSTRATIIONS: 680 pgs., thousands of black & white and color illustrations

• ISBN: 978-1-940743-95-0

• ALTERNATE EDITION: A Spanish language version (“Ciudad Regular”) is also available:

• PUBISHER’S WEB PAGE FOR THE BOOK: here

• AMAZON PAGE: here

• BARNES & NOBLE PAGE: here

MEETING ALERT - The Future of Rudolph's BOSTON GOVERNMENT SERVICE CENTER - December 17th

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 December 17th.

THE SITUATION:

The BOSTON GOVERNMENT SERVICE CENTER—one of Paul Rudolph’s largest and most multifaceted public buildings - 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.)

MEETING ALERT:

TONIGHT - Thursday, December 17th, 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

• Staff will present draft Project Proposal for the redevelopment

• Staff will ask for your comments

You are invited to attend (and attendance is Free)

TAKE ACTION:

• Attend the Public ZOOM meeting on Thursday, December 17th, 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, December 17, 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/webinar/register/WN_Zw1ed5LORHqn_M2OsqgqBg

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

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; 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

The Buildings Couldn't Be Saved—But the Vision Can Be Honored: the Kickstarter Campaign for the New Book about Rudolph's "SHORELINE"

Learn about the Kickstarter Campaign for the book that takes a fresh look at Paul Rudolph’s partially-realized project for a dynamic, mixed-use neighborhood in Buffalo: SHORELINE

SHORELINE: RUDOLPH’S VISION OF DIGNIFIED HOUSING

Paul Rudolph was a master of architectural perspective drawing—and this is his rendering of a portion of his vison for the Shoreline Apartments development. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

Located steps from Buffalo, NY’s City Hall, Shoreline Apartments was an extensive housing complex designed by Paul Rudolph and completed in 1974. Featuring shed roofs, ribbed concrete exteriors, projecting balconies, and enclosed garden courts, the project combined Rudolph’s spatial radicalism with his innovative designs for human-scaled, high-density housing and a mix of multiple functions.

Rudolph’s scheme featured an arrangement of monumental, terraced high-rises flanking a marina, a sprawling school and community center, and a series of low and mid-rise apartment buildings meant to evoke Italian mountain villages, with green spaces woven through the site.

Arthur Drexler, the powerful director of the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design Department, included Shoreline in the 1970 MoMA exhibition, Work in Progress. The work, he said, showed—

“With few exceptions, Paul Rudolph’s buildings can be recognized by their complexity, their sculptural details, their effects of scale and their texture.”

And that they manifest—

“. . . .a commitment to the idea that architecture, besides being technology, sociology and moral philosophy, must finally produce works of art if it is to be worth bothering about at all.”

A VISION PARTIALLY FULFILLED

ABOVE: Another of Paul Rudolph’s architectural renderings of Shoreline, this one showing some of the low-rise housing that was built. This drawing is anticipated to be on the cover of the new book. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

LEFT: An aerial view of a portion of Shoreline. Photograph by Donald Luckenbill © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation

In the end, only two phases of the Shoreline affordable housing development were built, and families moved in and made lives there—as can be seen in the below photos.

Views of Shoreline, occupied and and active with life. ABOVE: Photograph by Joseph W. Molitor courtesy of Columbia University, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Joseph W. Molitor Photograph Collection. BELOW: Photograph by G. E. Kidder Smith, courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

AND A VISION OVERSHADOWED—aND SPURNED

Some of the remains of the demolished Shoreline project. Photograph by William Vogel

After years of occupancy, they became among the most reviled buildings in Buffalo because—like many public housing designs of that era—their inventive, complex forms and admirable social aspirations were overshadowed by disrepair, crime, and vacancy. Even so, some saw positive values in Paul Rudolph’s designs, and attempts were made to save Shoreline.

Following failed attempts at landmarking the structures for preservation, the first round of demolitions began in summer 2015—and In 2017, the site’s current owner accelerated the demolition schedule. As of January 2018, the last holdout was vacated from his unit.

REMEMBERING A POSITIVE VISION

The 2019 exhibition, Shoreline: Remembering a Waterfront Vision, at El Museo

El Museo is a Buffalo-based nonprofit visual arts organization, dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary work by underserved artists, and cultural programming that engages diverse communities. In 2019 they presented an exhibition, Shoreline: Remembering a Waterfront Vision, showing drawings, photographs, documents, and artworks, spanning from the original vision of the Buffalo Waterfront Development in the 1960s to the eventual destruction of Shoreline in recent years. The exhibition materials, drawn from archival sources as well as artistic responses, traced the erosion of an architectural, urban, and social vision for Buffalo’s waterfront, one that was only ever partially realized.

Considering the Shoreline within this context, they looked at the architectural style of Brutalism, the complicated history of urban renewal, and the past attempts by government to play a leading role in developing cities and providing social housing on a mass scale. They asked: Amidst Buffalo’s so-called renaissance, when its historical assets are being reevaluated, preserved, and restored, why was there a race to forget the Shoreline?

Following the exhibition, Remembering Shoreline included a two-day public symposium that brought together architects, planners, researchers, and activists from Buffalo and beyond to take a closer look at the history of the Shoreline Apartments, and discuss Paul Rudolph, Brutalism, urban renewal, housing, and preservation.

SHORELINE— THE BOOK

As of mid-2020, almost all of Shoreline complex has been lost to the bulldozer. While we cannot bring back the buildings, it is important that we remember this history in a tangible way.

El Museo is currently working on collecting the materials and ideas from their exhibition and symposium into a book, to be published in Spring 2021: Shoreline: Remembering a Waterfront Vision. 

It will include the exhibition materials such as drawings and photographs from Paul Rudolph’s archive, as well as works by Avye Alexandres, David Torke, Kurt Treeby, and Rima Yamazaki. Also featured will be essays by and conversations with symposium participants Kelvin Dickinson, Kate Wagner, Mark Byrnes, Susanne Schindler, Henry Taylor, Charles Davis, Jessie Fisher, Aaron Bartley, and editors Barbara Campagna and Bryan Lee.

THE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

El Museo is publishing this book independently, and your contribution will go towards the cost of editing and printing this full-color, perfect-bound, 8x10 volume. The book that will vividly show the importance this example of a vision for the public good—a type of Initiative which leaders had engaged in, and which were embodied in the designs of great architects like Paul Rudolph.

We hope you will help make this project happen—and there’s a Kickstarter Campaign to fund the book. You can find out about it HERE, including the benefits of contributing—like getting copies of the book, photographic color prints of Shoreline, and large-format prints of Paul Rudolph’s compelling drawings of Shoreline.

The GIFT GUIDE for Architecture Lovers (and especially for Rudolph fans!)

Even the counterweights at Paul Rudolph’s Walker Guest House seem to have the festive, holiday spirit! Glory Curtis Williams took this intriguing detail photograph of the replica of the building, when it was on display during the 2019 Palm Springs Modernism Week.

Philip Johnson—a long-time friend of Rudolph—most famous work is his own home: the Glass House. Even this building—a work of architecture of world-wide renown—has become “giftable” in the form of this snow globe, offered by National Trust for Historic Preservation.

With the arrival of the Holiday Season, our thoughts turn to gifts. For the very young, it’s the the anticipation of receiving them—but for the rest of us, the focus (and sometimes agony) is on search, selection, and shopping for presents that are simultaneously available, affordable, and appropriate—and, we hope, something that’s un-anticipated: a real and pleasurable surprise.

How hard can that be? Very—if the intended recipient is a design-savvy architect or fan of architecture. They’re probably already aware of most of the design/building-themed books, accessories, and “lifestyle” tools. But help is available…

That assistance is in the form of the gift guides. Published annually, this proliferating phenomenon proffers guides for almost every interest, from those who obsessed with cooking -to- those who (like in our group) are aficionados of concrete. More than ever, one can find annually-issued gift guides for architects—and this year, so far, we’ve encountered at least four that are abundant with attractive ideas:

“Concrete After Lightning”—a concrete-scented candle to light up the holidays.

ARCHITECT MAGAZINE

Architect is the official journal of the American Institute of Architects, and they have issued their “Gift Guide 2020”

It offers numerous choices, and included is a shirt which highlights the contributions of women in architecture, a set of modular lights that pulsate with different colors, Lamy’s Safari fountain pen (always a favorite among designers), the beautiful series of Ruth Asawa stamps issued by the United States Postal Service, and some colorful bowls made from recycled skateboards.

The items that will no doubt delight Rudolphians most are a concrete-scented candle made by D.S. & Durga; and the two cleverly shaped, architecturally-themed concrete planters from Rosenwood Studio.

Borson’s list of “essential” books includes monographs on Corb, Scarpa, Lutyens, and Saarinen, several volumes by Frank D. K. Ching, and key works by Christopher Alexander and on Dieter Rams.

LIFE OF AN ARCHITECT

Bob Borsons’s always interesting blog (in which he shares about the realities of the profession) has an established track record for issuing annual gift guides—ones in which he is quite articulate about what would make each suggested gift meaningful and useful.

This year, his “Holiday Gift Guide For Architects” is his 11th such entry. It has some of the things that one might already have guessed could be included (like an Aalto vase or the Vignelli wall calendar—both staples in the homes and offices of the tasteful demographic), and something delightfully outrageous: a $55,000 utility vehicle. Best for this year, he gives us a selection of 40 books—and what makes that book list distinctive is that they’re volumes which are in his own personal collection. Borson tells us that he’s been building up his library for decades—and these are the books which he personally recommends as “essentials”.

The Architray, which can hold pens, pencils, and other such items—and makes them easily accessible.

ARCHITECTURE LAB MAGAZINE

Their list, “47 of the Best Gifts for Architects in 2020,” has a large number of Alessi products—particularly ones designed by Zaha Hadid. Her centerpiece, composed of 5 repositionable parts, captures the adventurous form-making of that architect—as does another Alessi suggestion: a rattan centerpiece by the Campana brothers.

The other kind of gift which is prominent in this list are various types of “blocks” construction sets: not just Lego (though they are included), but also two different ones in the Blockitecture series, as well as a house from Wise Elk (which is composed of parts made from real plaster and ceramic.) Concrete-o-philes will appreciate the “Brutalist Concrete Architray” which was designed by 7thFl Studio.

The “My Little Architect” set, with it’s colorful and flexible system, might well intrigue all age groups.

GIFTHEM

Gifthem is a site that specializes in creating gift lists for different professions and interests—a practical and useful service. Thus they have lists for almost any domain of practice or interest, including Judges, Dentists, Basketball Enthusiasts, Minecraft Fans, Barbers, Quilters, Doctors…—and yes, Architects. This year’s list starts by acknowledging that “…architects are too picky and investigative in everything due to the nature of their field so finding the gifts for architects is a bit tricky”—and one will not find a more honest assessment of the situation!

They do come up with some unique suggestions, like a pair of socks whose pattern suggests avantgarde architectural plans from Italy in the 1960’s, a wallet whose exterior faces are printed with a residential floor plan, frameable prints that show patent drawings for traditional drafting tools, and—for the younger members of the profession—a “My Little Architect” building set, composed of colorful, transparent plastic tiles which assemble via a clever system of magnets.

The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation includes a “SHOP” page on it’s website—which is useful year-round, but especially for the holiday shopper.

A BETTER CHOICE: GIVE RUDOLPH tHIS HOLIDAY!

With all the suggestions contained in the above gift guides, one might think that the possibilities have been exhausted. True, a number of the choices in those lists include items that are cleverly made of concrete—and whose interest, in part, rely on the power of surprise, as such objects rarely use that herculean material.

But if the person you’re shopping for has tastes and interests which lean in the direction of the work of Paul Rudolph, there are gifts which are more focused on him—his life and career—and the great body of work he created.

The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation’s website has a “SHOP” page, which offers a variety of items which will illuminate the vast range of creation that emerged from Rudolph’s innovative and prolific career. During his half-century of practice, he was engaged in architecture, interior design, product design, furniture design, lighting design, education, issues of urbanism, mentorship, and the invention of systems of construction. Rudolph—for those who look into the prodigious number of projects he took on—is an endless resource of interest and inspiration.

The books, offered through our SHOP page, highlight and investigate his many contributions. Here are four studies which are prime sources for leaning about Rudolph’s multiple talents and accomplishments.

Celebrating Rudolph’s 100th birthday, this pair of catalogs are the official publication of the centennial exhibitions: “Paul Rudolph: The Personal Laboratory” -and- “Paul Rudolph: The Hong Kong Journey.” The former exhibit looked at how Rudolph used his own residences as places for experimentation with space, materials, and light—truly as “laboratories” of design. Though Rudolph was based in the US, he was called upon by clients in Asia to design a variety of projects, both commercial and residential. In the latter exhibit there was a focus on Rudolph’s work in Hong Kong, with an emphasis on the Bond Centre: the double-skyscraper towers which he designed, that are prominent on the Hong Kong’s skyline. The set of catalogs are available HERE.

Paul Rudolph’s creative & prolific half-century career extended to nearly the end of the 20th century—and this book focuses on the work from the latter part of his oeuvre. It includes: buildings for many parts of the US, fascinating ambitious projects for Asia, the Modulightor Building (the headquarters for the lighting business which he co-founded, and whose lines of light fixtures he designed), and the design of his own intriguing residence (his “Quadruplex” penthouse on Beekman Place in New York City). Hand-picked by Rudolph himself, the 27 projects profiled in Roberto de Alba’s book are shown through a broad selection of drawings, sketches, photographs, plans, and perspective views. The book includes illuminating introductory texts by Roberto De Alba, Mildred F. Schmertz, and Robert Bruegmann; as well as a fascinating in-depth interview with Rudolph by Peter Blake. It is available HERE.

On of Paul Rudolph’s most interesting later projects is the “Quadruplex” penthouse which he built for himself in New York City, with dramatic views of the East River. That residence was the cover story of this issue of “FDR: The FLORIDA DESIGN REVIEW”, and the article included the most complete photographic documentation ever published of the rich set of spaces within that project. Copies of this rare publication are available HERE.

Moleskine, in collaboration with Princeton Architectural Press, has brought out a series of books focusing on the drawings and sketches of innovative designers—-including this volume on Paul Rudolph. It features an insightful introduction by John Morris Dixon. It is available HERE.

OTHER GIFT BOOKS FROM oUR SHOP

While the monographs on Rudolph, above, are exceptional gifts, also available through the SHOP page are several other works of profound interest. These studies are impressive in the depth of their research, and stimulating in their insights and revelations.

R.D. Chin is an architect who worked for Paul Rudolph, and knew him well. Mr. Chin’s career has included working on numerous building types—and he then trained to become a Feng Shui master (whose practice includes consulting on a variety of architectural projects.) In this well-illustrated and colorful volume, he shares the wisdom of that system, and how it can be applied to the practical challenges of architecture and interior design. It is available HERE.

Beatriz Colomina explores the enormous impact of medical discourse and imaging technologies on the formation, representation and reception of twentieth-century architecture. It challenges the normal understanding of modern architecture by proposing that it was shaped by the dominant medical obsessions of its time—and traces the psychopathologies of 20th century architecture, suggesting that if we want to talk about the state of architecture today, we should look to the dominant obsessions with illness and the latest techniques of imaging the body. It is available HERE.

Caroline Rob Zaleski’s “Long Island Modernism 1930-1980” belongs in the library of anyone interested in the history of Modernism in America. It has eye-opening archival photographs and surprising discoveries about pioneering architecture by visionary architects, such as Rudolph, Breuer, Wallace Harrison, Wright, and Albert Frey with A. Laurence Kocher. The Architects Newspaper praised It, saying: “Zaleski rises to the occasion, as architectural writers so often don’t, when pressed into play to give social context to builders and their buildings.” It is available HERE.

Celebrating Modernism in North Carolina (the home of Burroughs Wellcome)

Victoria Ballard Bell’s new book, TRIANGLE MODERN ARCHITECTURE. Her well-illustrated and deeply-researched history covers the movement to bring Modern architecture to the “Triangle” region of North Carolina. The book shows Modernism’s flourishing—and the generations of architects who have practiced in that area.

ARCHITECTURAL MODERNISM iN NORTH CAROLINA— INCREASING (AND WELL-DESERVED) ATTENTION

The Carolinas have always attracted significant architectural scholarship: from Plantations of the Carolina Low Country, Samuel Galliard Stoney’s study of the great antebellum mansions and their estates -to- Charleston Architecture 1670-1860 by Gene Waddell—and, of course, the books by that comprehensive historian of the buildings of the Old South: Mills Lane. All are magisterial studies, but they focus on the architecture of earlier eras. It is only in recent years that the richness and range of Modern architecture in North Carolina has received the attention which it deserves.

Pioneering the appreciation of Modern architecture in the state was the organization founded in 2007 by George Smart. Originally named Triangle Modernist Houses, it was renamed North Carolina Modernist (also known as NCMODERNIST) in 2013. It has grown to be active on many fronts, including: tours, preservation, archiving, education, providing technical and legal assistance, and encouraging scholarship—in all ways moving to open people’s eyes to the excellence and depth of Modern architecture in North Carolina. In 2016 they created USModernist, an award-winning educational organization for the documentation, preservation, and promotion of residential Modernist architecture. With their archive, podcasts, tours, and an unparalleled on-line magazine library (making available nearly 3,000,000 pages of architecture journals,) USModernist is America's largest open digital archive of Modernist houses and their architects—an accessible and treasured resource for all researchers.

Up to now, there’s been no book-length study which focuses, in-depth, on the beginnings and flourishing of Modern architecture in state. Such a book, Triangle Modern Architecture, has recently been published—and we report on (and welcome) it here. But first: a little background on what’s meant by “Triangle.”

THE NORTH CAROLNA “TRIANGLE”

You’ll hear references to the Triangle—indeed, the word was part of the original name of NCMODERNIST. The Tringle term has two primary uses:

• A region within the state of North Carolina: approximately defined by a triangle with three cities at its points: Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh.

• Research Triangle Park: the celebrated research development—founded in 1959, and still flourishing today—which is the site of many of the country’s most dynamically innovative companies and research centers. It is located within the above, geographically larger triangle.

There’s a strong relationship between these two senses of the term, as the "Triangle" name was cemented in the public consciousness in the 1950’s with the creation of Research Triangle Park, home to numerous tech companies and enterprises. Although the name is now used to refer to the geographic region, the “Triangle" originally referred to the universities—whose research facilities, and the educated workforce they provide, has historically served as a major attraction for businesses to locate in the region.

The North Carolina “Triangle”—a triangular region roughly defined by Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh.

LEFT: Alex Sayf Cummings fascinating history of Research Triangle Park: the US’s largest research development—located within North Carolina’s “Triangle” region. Read our article about the book here. ABOVE: Paul Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome building (shown circled), within North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. Only a portion of Research Triangle Park is shown here, but even this partial view captures some of Burroughs Wellcome’s distinguished neighbors: IBM, Cree, Toshiba, RTI, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, United Therapeutics, and the National Humanities Center.

THE “TRIANGLE” AS A HOME FOR MODERNISM

All the above is prologue to celebrating the publication of a new book, TRIANGLE MODERN ARCHITCTURE by Victoria Ballard Bell. A licensed architect and writer who has lived in North Carolina for decades, she is the author (with Patrick Rand) of two other architecture books: Materials for Design and Materials for Design 2.

Bell recounts:

“When we first moved here. . . .I heard snippets about architects and Kamphoefner. I wondered: ‘Why has someone not written a book?’ Nobody’s told the story.”

And tells it she has! Bell is referring to Henry Kamphoefner, and architect who—primarily in role of a long-time, dynamic educator—was key to the seeding and growth of Modern architecture in the Triangle region of North Carolina. He, and architects he brought to the School (now College) of Design at North Carolina State University, and other architects who came to settle and/or work in the region, created a body of buildings which are diverse and elegant, caring in their detailing and contextual in their character.

Architects of international stature (Frank Lloyd Wright, Matthew Nowicki, Buckminster Fuller, Paul Rudolph) are, in varying degrees, part of the story. But where the book excels is how it reveals, though depthful research and careful telling, the overall story of the migration into the culture of what must have originally seemed like radically modern design (when contrasted with the existing design traditions of the region.)

Bell shows how lesser-known designers brought forth a wealth of work that can now be proudly considered part of the the state’s (and country’s) cultural heritage.

Several of the excellent works of that are included in TRIANGLE MODERN ARCHITECTURE:

TOP-TO-BOTTOM: Architect Eduardo Catalano’s own residence, in Raleigh, as featured on the cover of the August, 1955 issue of House + Home magazine; Architect George Matsumoto’s own house, in Raleigh, was on the cover of 1957’s Record Houses (the annual issue in which Architectural Record published what they considered to be each year’s most significant residential designs); Architect G. Milton Small’s own architectural office building in Raleigh, which was included in a Architectural Record’s 1969 article on the design of architect’s offices; Paul Rudolph’s perspective rendering of Burroughs Wellcome, situated within Research Triangle Park.

These architects, who practiced in the Triangle region, should be better-known and studied, but they have not had the attention they deserve. A few, like Catalano and Harris, did achieve recognition in during their career, but have fallen out of the “repertoire” of recent architectural historians’ thinking. Others never had more than a very local renown. All deserve to be commemorated, and Triangle Modern Architecture brings salutary attention to the work of this group, among them—

• G. Milton Small

• George Masumoto

• Eduardo Catalano

• Harwell Hamilton Harris

• Arthur Cogswell Jr.

• Jon Andre Condoret

—and several others.

The latter half of the book profiles contemporary firms who are carrying on in this tradition. There is certainly some diversity among them—via their affinity for varying palettes of materials, uses of color, and their choices about the proportion of glazed to solid areas, as well as the different building types (residential/institutional/commercial) with which they’re each engaged. But they all are clearly working within the formal vocabulary established by the first generation of Modern architects who worked in North Carolina’s Triangle region. Among the architects in this section is Frank Harmon, who wrote the book’s preface—and that’s book-ended by George Smart, who writes this volume’s moving epilogue.

TRIANGLE MODERN ARCHITECTURE has a profusion of illustrations, both in black & white and color. Unlike many architecture books, this one is not afraid of including drawings, ranging from Rudolph’s perspective drawing of Burroughs Wellcome -to- a colorful pastel by Nowicki -to- Macon Strother Smith’s study-sketch for a building corner detail. Photos are abundant, including lively snapshots of Frank Lloyd Wright visiting the area, architectural models, and mid-century Modern interiors.

Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, recipient of the 2020 AIA Gold Medal, has said of the book:

“Triangle Modern Architecture provides us a timely insight into the rich history and bold future of modern architecture in North Carolina, reminding us that the modernist project here is alive and well and most vital in its interpretations and adaptations to local places and typologies.”

We congratulate Victoria Ballard Bell, and her publisher, for bringing out TRIANGLE MODERN ARCHITECTURE, her new (and much needed) book on the origin and growth of Modern architecture in that region.

BURROUGHS WELLCOME —THE TRIANGLE’S MOST IMPORTANT MODERN BUILDING— IS THREATENED

Above and Below: the Burroughs Wellcome building, designed by Paul Rudolph, and located within North Carolina’s Triangle Research Park

YOU CAN HELP SAVE IT!

The Burroughs Wellcome building is threated with imminent demolition.

Its 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.

---

IMAGE CREDITS

North Carolina Triangle map: U.S. Geological Survey; Aerial view of a part of Research Triangle Park: courtesy of Google Maps; House + Home (Catalano House), Record Houses (Matsumoto House), and Architectural Record (Small office building): courtesy of US Modernist Library; Burroughs Wellcome perspective rendering by Paul Rudolph: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Photograph of Burroughs Wellcome building (black and white): photograph courtesy of Columbia University, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Joseph W. Molitor Photograph Collection ; Photograph of Burroughs Wellcome building (color): photograph courtesy of © PJ McDonnell, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation Archives

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

Burroughs Wellcome: activist calls it "Hallowed Ground In AIDS History"

The opening image of our recent post about the importance Burroughs Wellcome Building as an historic site, both in the history of protest, AIDS, and in the history of medicine. Shown are ACT UP protesters, arrested and being led out of Burroughs Wellcome, with the building in the background. Peter Staley is at the right-hand edge of the image.

We recently wrote about the importance of the Burroughs Wellcome Building: both as a center of pharmaceutical research for drugs to treat AIDS, and as a site of protest—and you can read the full, in-depth story here: BURROUGHS WELLCOME: SITE OF HISTORIC PROTEST

THE PROTEST

Our post covered the controversy, outlining who the protagonists and what was at issue—which we can summarize here:

Burroughs Wellcome: the international pharmaceutical company, originally founded in 1880. Numerous medicines had been developed at their US headquarters and research center (designed by Paul Rudolph, and located in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park), and Nobel-prize winners Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings had done significant work there.

ACT UP: (the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) Founded in 1987, in the heated heart of the AIDS crisis, it has worked to end AIDS through direct action, research, treatment, advocacy, and urging changes to legislation and public policy. ACT UP became famous for their “actions”: well-planned and provocative demonstrations, at key locations, to get maximum attention on the issues.

The Burroughs Wellcome Building, designed by Paul Rudolph. It was here that the important AIDS drug AZT was developed—and also the site of the historic first protest about the company’s policies for pricing the life-saving medicine. Image courtesy of Lockwood Greene Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

The Controversy: It was at Burroughs Wellcome that the first effective medicine to treat HIV had been developed: AZT. The company’s pricing of AZT was the prime issue. In an interview, one of ACT UP’s most well-known activists, Peter Staley, explained.:

When they [Burroughs Wellcome] 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.

What ensued were ACT UP protests at Burroughs Wellcome’s US headquarters (see photo at top), and a follow-up demonstration at the New York Stock Exchange (which temporarily halted trading.) As a consequence, Burroughs Wellcome did change their pricing policy, and there were other positive results. Perhaps as important: it showed that a committed community group could push-back at a financial-medical giant, and get results.

Peter Staley’s statement, as received directly from the activist.

“HALLLOWED GROUND”

We reached out to Peter Staley, who had been central to the planning and carrying out of both those ACT UP demonstrations, for a comment on the Burroughs Wellcome building—and are happy to share his emphatic response:

“The building is hallowed ground in AIDS history, where the first drug approved against HIV was launched from, priced, and defended. Epic battles with AIDS activists ensued, including an "invasion" of the BW's headquarters in 1989. Ultimately, the company took a far more cooperative approach to activists in the 1990s, leading to the triple-drug regimens that turned HIV from a death sentence to a manageable disease.”

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— 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.

The Burroughs Wellcome Building, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina — an historic site. Image courtesy of the Wellcome Collection

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.