Exhibit Features Yale's A&A Renovation

Charles Gwathmey and Robert Siegel of New York's Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects are the subjects of a new exhibition at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Museum director Deborah Velders put the show together about the architects - who also designed the museum it is being shown in. According to Velders in an article in the Star News,

"Before I actually even got to this job I went to see Charles Gwathmey," Velders said. "Part of the reason I interviewed here was because (the Cameron) was a Gwathmey Siegel building. It's not that I'm so knowledgeable about architecture, I just knew they were an important architectural firm and it impressed me that the leadership here was serious about having an important art museum, just (by) their choice of architect. So I thought a good show sometime would be an exhibition devoted to their work, because I understood that people here didn't like the building."

After their meeting, Velders said, Gwathmey "walked me to the door and said, 'I'll help you.' And now here we are, four years later."

The resulting exhibit, "Inspiration and Transformation" examines five projects along the architects' careers over the past 40 years. The most recent work featured in the exhibition is Gwathmey's design for Yale's Art & Architecture building (now known as Rudolph Hall):

Featuring a stunning photograph of the building illuminated by a lightbox, the display also includes a series of paintings of squares by Joseph Alpers, an artist who also taught at Yale. (The paintings are owned by Gwathmey and are usually housed in his New York apartment.) A video loop will show the 3-D modeling that was used to design the complex project, which Sprunt (the curator of the exhibit) said might not have been possible without the aid of computers.

For Velders, "Inspiration and Transformation" has "the potential of trying to inform people in this community, and visitors, about the importance of architecture," she said. "Having had the great privilege of working in buildings by significant architects, great buildings I would say, I've seen the difference (in) how you work and live and feel just being in it."

If you want to go see the show:

What: “Gwathmey Siegel: Inspiration and Transformation,” featuring the work of American architectural firm Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects

When: Public opening is 7-8 p.m. June 22, and the show will remain on display through January 10, 2010

Where: Cameron Art Museum, 3201 S. 17th St., Wilmington South Carolina
Details: 395-5999 or www.CameronArtMuseum.com. Museum hours are 11 a.m.-2:00 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.

Sarasota Modern Home Tour - 07/25/09

Martie Lieberman, Sarasota resident and Paul Rudolph Foundation member, is offering a tour of modern homes in Sarasota including the work of Paul Rudolph. According to her email,

You are invited to join a small (fun!) group of architecture enthusiasts from Tampa and Temple Terrace, Florida, for a special tour of "Sarasota School of Architecture" homes and buildings designed by architects Paul Rudolph, Ralph Twitchell, Seibert Architects and more. Our final tour location will include a cocktail party for homeowners, architects and tour-goers. Join us!

If you are interested in going, these are the particulars:

WHAT: Sarasota School of Architecture Tour
DATE: SATURDAY, JULY 25, 2009 - 1:00PM to 5:30 PM
WHERE: HOTEL INDIGO, downtown Sarasota, Florida
TICKETS: $50 PER PERSON. Your check is your reservation.

Mail checks (sorry, no credit card reservations) to:
Martie Lieberman
474 Magellan Drive
Sarasota, FL 34243

Please include your name and email address - Martie will confirm each reservation received until the tour is sold out.

If you have questions, contact Martie directly via email at martie.lieberman@gmail.com or call her at (941)724-1118.

Thanks to Martie for the head's up and everything she's doing to keep Sarasota's modern architecture in the spotlight!

New Works Inspired by Paul Rudolph

The Ivy by Woods Bagot is influenced by Paul Rudolph
As we've mentioned before in the blog (here and here) - Paul Rudolph's name has been coming up frequently when buildings are reviewed in the press. Whether comparing an architecture school in the Southwest to Yale's A&A or an office building in Florida to the Milam residence, Paul Rudolph's iconic architecture has left a lasting impression on many architects to this day.

During his lifetime there were other architects whose work appeared very similar to Mr. Rudolph's. Brutalism was big in the 60's for example - and many architects were inspired by the images of Rudolph's work in architectural publications. The result was buildings around the country that looked like something he would have built, but upon closer inspection usually lack the density that Paul's work displayed.

Rudolph also taught many well known architects - Lord Norman Foster, Robert A.M. Stern, Lord Richard Rogers, Stanley Tigerman, and many more in and around Sarasota. His influence did not necessarily result in buildings that appear like something Mr. Rudolph would have done himself, but his method of design is what continues to this day. When he taught at Yale, Paul Rudolph expressed a desire that the students not turn into miniature versions of himself.

The Ivy by Woods Bagot as seen from the street
Now, a new generation of architects who never studied or were employed by Rudolph have discovered his designs and used them as inspiration for work of their own. The most recent example is the work of Woods Bagot, an Australian architecture firm with offices around the world. As mentioned in an article in the blog Dexigner, the firm's design for the Ivy in Sydney includes references to the work of Paul Rudolph:

Designed by Woods Bagot and interior designers Hecker Phelan Guthrie, Ivy includes 18 bars, nine restaurants and a rooftop pool but the scale of the complex is "deftly understated" according to the awards jury of the Architects Institute of Australia (AIA).

"A reprieve for the public within a predominantly commercial domain, Ivy has been conceived as a house for the people of Sydney which redefines Palm Spring glamour and nostalgia," said Nik Karalis, Principal at Woods Bagot and lead designer on Ivy.

"As green oasis in the city centre, it draws inspiration from the modern houses of California and Florida created by architects such as Paul Rudolph, Richard Neutra and John Lautner."

Another project by Woods Bagot that reminds us of the Milam Residence
Paul Rudolph's work continues to affect a younger generation of architects and designers, over a decade after his death in 1997. Whether directly influenced by a project he designed or through his ideas regarding scale, the need for "caves" and the influence of the automobile in architecture, Paul Rudolph's work is just as timely as it was during his lifetime.

If you know of another project that reminds you of Paul Rudolph's work, please email us at information@paulrudolph.org and we'll include it in a future post.

Paul Rudolph Book Back in Print

Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses Book Cover
Princeton Architectural Press has reprinted the book "Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses" and plans to release it August 16th, 2009. According to their website,

Paul Rudolph, one of the 20th century's most iconoclastic architects, is best known—and most maligned—for his large "brutalist" buildings, like the Yale Art and Architecture Building. So it will surprise many to learn that early in his career he developed a series of houses that represent the unrivaled possibilities of a modest American modernism.

With their distinctive natural landscapes, local architectural precedents, and exploitation of innovative construction materials, the Florida houses, some eighty projects built between 1946 and 1961, brought modern architectural form into a gracious subtropical world of natural abundance. Like the locally inspired desert houses of another modern master, Albert Frey, Rudolph's Florida houses represent a distillation and reinterpretation of traditional architectural ideas developed to a high pitch of stylistic refinement.

Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses reveals all of Rudolph's early residential work. Along with Rudolph's personal essays and renderings, duotone photographs by Ezra Stoller and Joseph Molitor, and insightful text by Joseph King and Christopher Domin, this compelling new book conveys the lightness, timelessness, strength, materiality, and transcendency of Rudolph's work.

The book, along with the recent renovation and rededication of Paul Rudolph Hall at Yale, is credited with launching a renewed interest in Paul Rudolph's life and work. According to Joe King, he and co-author Christopher Domin have added a new preface detailing the response their book has received and the reexamination of Rudolph's legacy.

To purchase a copy, you can go to these websites:

Princeton Architectural Press
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Borders

Modern House Survey Prompted by Rudolph Loss

The Micheels Residence before demolition in 2007
David Hay writes in Protecting New Canaan’s Modernism in yesterday's New York Times about an online survey of modern homes in New Canaan, Connecticut. The New Canaan Mid-Century Modern Houses Survey was sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation Northeast Office, the New Canaan Historical Society, the Philip Johnson Glass House, and the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation. According to their website,

The New Canaan Mid-Century Modern Houses survey was designed to provide a more complete study of Modern residences in New Canaan and serve as a national model for surveys of other mid-century houses in the United States.

According to Christy MacLear, Executive Director of the Philip Johnson Glass House,

"The Survey of New Canaan homes was prompted by the demolition of the Paul Rudolph home in Westport CT in 2007. A part of the Judge’s decision to allow demolition was the “lack of criteria for significance”. That same year we were opening the Philip Johnson Glass House to the public with great fanfare and interest. How could our Modern assets garner such interest but simultaneously be threatened because of a lack of terminology, criteria or documentation?

As Modernism is our newest entrant into the continuum of architectural movements requiring historic preservation, this tear down was a call to action. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, through the Glass House, partnered with the New Canaan Historical Society to leverage an earlier study done by DoCoMoMo’s Northeast chapter to expand/ enhance, publish and put on-line the survey of the remaining 91 modern homes in New Canaan. Across this site you will see our goals, examples and content to create better tools, common vernacular and greater awareness. Our hope is that other communities embarking on a modern survey will connect to these tools and expand this site to showcase the homes and architects of this newest era of preservation."

The home designed by Paul Rudolph that Ms. MacLear refers to is the Dr. Louis Micheels residence in Westport, Connecticut that was demolished in early 2007.

The Paul Rudolph Foundation joined with the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation in the suit to preserve the home from demolition, when a local developer purchased the property and announced plans to tear down the home and build a new one in its place. The Foundation sent representatives to the hearings and was disappointed when the judge ruled in favor of the new owner, who had convinced Dr. Micheels to take the stand and tell the court he did not believe the house had any historical significance. The loss of the residence, the first "modern" structure the Connecticut Trust had tried to save from demolition, was a wake up call regarding threats to other modern architecture both in the state and elsewhere.

In an effort to increase grassroots awareness about the need to preserve modern american architecture (defined as 1935-1975) the Paul Rudolph Foundation established this blog, as well as a flickr group dedicated to posting images of Paul Rudolph structures from around the world. In addition, the Foundation is surveying remaining Rudolph designed structures to ascertain their current conditions and forecast future preservation efforts. To date, the Foundation has a list of 11 threatened buildings, after the recent loss of Riverview High School in Sarasota, Florida.

If you are interested in helping the Paul Rudolph Foundation promote Paul Rudolph's work, please contact us at information@paulrudolph.org. We are always in need of volunteers and donations (which are tax-deductible) to increase our programs and support our preservation efforts.

Riverview Demolition Continues

'Parking Lot' by Jason Brockert
Harold Bubil, columnist for the Sarasota's Herald-Tribune, has written another article in this past Saturday's edition about the continuing demolition of Riverview High School. According to Mr. Bubil,

"After stopping a few times in the past two weeks to view the demolition of Riverview High, I must admit that it leaves me oddly unmoved.

A lot of great things happened there in the past 50 years. A lot of work went into making that building, and preventing it from being torn down. Now it is rubble. Whether it is waste remains a matter of debate --and I am over it."

Mr. Bubil's feelings reflect a lot of what we heard during the debate of the building's preservation: that the building had been let fall apart to the point people in the community couldn't see it for the historic structure it had once been - metal roofs covered the skylights designed to bring light into the building's interior, fabric awnings covered parts of the exterior. In its place, the school board prefers a parking lot.

The demolition is expected to be complete by the third week of July - no later the end of the month. The 1958 dedication plaque, once a symbol of the community's pride in the modern glass and steel building, has been put in storage to make way for asphalt delivery trucks.

Mr. Bubil notes none of the architects he has spoken to about the building have gone to see the demolition. According to emails we've received from friends in Sarasota, members of the community who went to show their kids the building before it is gone were turned away by security guards.

"Pits and the Pendulum" in Boston

Ted Smalley Bowen writes in an article for the Metropolis POV "Letter from Boston: It’s the Pedestrian-Oriented Small Commercial Districts, Stupid" about Boston Mayor Tom Menino's quest to remake the city's image at the expense of existing examples of significant modern architecture.

Like a Boston version of Robert Moses, the four term mayor planned in 2006-2007 to seal his legacy by relocating City Hall and building a 1,000 ft tower in the financial district, destroying an office tower by Paul Rudolph in the process. And like Mr. Moses, who famously quipped "if the ends don't justify the means, what does?", the mayor expected everyone else to go along with him.

Fast forward to 2009 - an election year amidst a continuing recession. Much like New York City, Boston has its own share of empty pits marking where grand schemes got started only to be put indefinitely on hold. Fortunately for fans of Paul Rudolph's Blue Cross/Blue Shield building and Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles' city hall, demolition was delayed and the economy kept them from joining the other holes around town.

The mayoral election now finds Menino on the defensive as his opponents use his efforts against him and accuse the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) of cozying up to developers at the expense of neighborhoods and preservation.

Boston is known for some of the first historic neighborhoods in the country. With any luck, Boston's "pits" will result in a swing of the pendulum back towards local control of development and preservation of its Modern architectural heritage.