1.
Aston Webb
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He was President of the Royal Academy from 1919 to 1924, and the founding Chairman of the London Society. He returned to London in 1874 to set up his own practice, from the early 1880s, he joined the Royal Institute of British Architects and began working in partnership with Ingress Bell. Their first major commission was a design for the Victoria Law Courts in Birmingham. Towards the end of his career Webb was assisted by his sons, Maurice, ralph Knott, who designed Londons County Hall, began his work as an apprentice to Webb executing the drawings for his competition entries. He died in Kensington, London, on 21 August 1930 and he served as RIBA President and, having been elected as a full member of the Royal Academy in 1903, served as acting president from 1919 to 1924. He received the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 1905 and was the first recipient of the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 1907 and he was the first chairman of the London Society in 1912. One of his earliest works was built for the Six Masters of The Royal Grammar School Worcester in 1877 and these almshouses are in the Arts and Crafts style, different from his later work. Webbs first major work was the restoration of the medieval St Bartholomew-the-Great in Smithfield and his brother Edward Alfred Webb was the churchwarden at the time, and his association with the church probably helped the young architect get the job. In London, Webbs best known include the Queen Victoria Memorial and The Mall approach to, and the principal facade of, Buckingham Palace. Webb also designed the Victoria and Albert Museums main building, the Royal United Services Institute, Whitehall and he also designed the Britannia Royal Naval College, Devon, where Royal Naval officers are still trained. He enlarged and sympathetically restored the perpendicular Church of St John Baptist, Claines, Worcester, nearby he was also responsible for the new church of St. George, consecrated in 1895, which replaced an earlier smaller building in St. Georges Square, Barbourne, Worcester. With his partner Ingress Bell, he extended St Andrews Church, in Fulham Fields, London, remodelled the chancel, residential commissions included Nos 2 and 4 Blackheath Park, in Blackheath, south-east London. He also designed a library wing, including the Cedar Library, at The Hendre, in March 1889 the consistory of the French Protestant Church of London commissioned Aston Webb to design a new church. It was erected in 1891–93 at 8–9 Soho Square in London, the church is one of Aston Webbs Gothic school works. In 1901 Aston Webb designed the headquarters for a brewery at 115 Tooley Street, London and this was done as part of the development of More London. Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray, commissioned Webb to undertake major extensions to his property, Dunecht House, Aberdeenshire, at the University of Birmingham, the whole of the original scheme, in the Byzantine style, was the product of the Webb-Bell partnership. This consisted of a building with five radial blocks. The central building of Chancellors Court containing the Great Hall is named after Aston Webb, the main feature is a large dome that sits atop the entrance logia
2.
Paul Williams (architect)
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Paul Revere Williams, FAIA was an American architect based in Los Angeles, California. He practiced largely in Southern California and designed the homes of celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Lon Chaney, Barbara Stanwyck. He also designed many public and private buildings, orphaned at four years of age, Williams was the only African American student in his elementary school. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier and he went on to attend the University of Southern California, designing several residential buildings while still a student there. Williams became an architect in 1921, and the first certified African-American architect west of the Mississippi. He married Della Mae Givens on June 27,1917, at the First AME Church in Los Angeles and they had three children, Paul Revere Williams, Jr. Marilyn Frances Williams, and Norma Lucille Williams. Williams won a competition at age 25, and three years later opened his own office. Known as a draftsman, he perfected the skill of rendering drawings upside down. This skill was developed so that his clients could see the drawings rendered right side up across the table from him. Struggling to gain attention, he served on the first Los Angeles City Planning Commission in 1920, from 1921 through 1924, Williams worked for Los Angeles architect John C. Austin, eventually becoming chief draftsman, before establishing his own office, in 1923, Williams became the first African-American member of the American Institute of Architects. In 1939, he won the AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building in Los Angeles, during World War II, Williams worked for the Navy Department as an architect. In 1951, Williams won the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc, man of the Year award and in 1953 he received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for his outstanding contributions as an architect and member of the African-American community. Williams also received doctorates from Lincoln University of Missouri, Howard University. In 1956, he won an award for service, from Wisdom Magazine, for contributions to knowledge, in 1957, he became the first black member to be inducted into the AIAs College of Fellows. An April 2,1957 letter from the Executive Secretary of AIA, book, The Small Home of Tomorrow, with a successor volume New Homes for Today. Essay, I Am a Negro, American Magazine, in 2004, USC honored him by listing him among its distinguished alumni, in the television commercial for the school shown during its football games. In 2017, Williams will be honored with the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal
3.
Robert Venturi
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Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. is an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major architectural figures in the twentieth century. Together with his wife and partner, Denise Scott Brown, he helped to shape the way that architects, planners and students experience and think about architecture and their buildings, planning, theoretical writings, and teaching have also contributed to the expansion of discourse about architecture. Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Prize in Architecture in 1991, the prize was awarded to him alone, a group of women architects attempted to get her name added retroactively to the prize, but the Pritzker Prize jury declined to do so. Venturi is also known for coining the maxim Less is a bore, Venturi lives in Philadelphia with Denise Scott Brown. Venturi was born in Philadelphia to Robert Venturi, Sr. Venturi attended school at the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1947 where he was a member-elect of Phi Beta Kappa and he received his M. F. A. from Princeton in 1950. In 1951 he briefly worked under Eero Saarinen in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and he was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 1954, where he studied and toured Europe for two years. From 1954 to 1965, Venturi held teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as Kahns teaching assistant, an instructor and it was there, in 1960, that he met fellow faculty member, architect and planner Denise Scott Brown. Venturi taught later at the Yale School of Architecture and was a lecturer with Scott Brown in 2003 at Harvard Universitys Graduate School of Design. A controversial critic of the blithely functionalist and symbolically vacuous architecture of modernism during the 1950s. Derived from course lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, Venturi received a grant from the Graham Foundation in 1965 to aid in its completion, the book demonstrated, through countless examples, an approach to understanding architectural composition and complexity, and the resulting richness and interest. Drawing from both vernacular and high-style sources, Venturi introduced new lessons from the buildings of both familiar and then forgotten. The book has been translated and published in 18 languages, immediately hailed as a theorist and designer with radical ideas, Venturi went to teach a series of studios at the Yale School of Architecture in the mid-1960s. This second manifesto was an even more stinging rebuke to orthodox modernism, the book coined the terms Duck and Decorated Shed — descriptions of the two predominant ways of embodying iconography in buildings. The work of Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown adopted the strategy, producing formally simple decorated sheds with rich, complex. Though he and his wife co-authored several additional books at the end of the century, venturis buildings typically juxtapose architectural systems, elements and aims, to acknowledge the conflicts often inherent in a project or site. Venturi created the firm Venturi and Short with William Short in 1960, after John Rauch replaced Short as partner in 1964, the firms name changed to Venturi and Rauch. Venturi married Denise Scott Brown on July 23,1967 in Santa Monica, California, in 1980, The firms name became Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown, and after Rauchs resignation in 1989, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates
4.
Moshe Safdie
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Moshe Safdie, CC, FAIA is an Israeli/Canadian/American architect, urban designer, educator, theorist, and author. He is most identified with Habitat 67, which paved the way for his international career, moshe Safdie was born in Haifa, Israel to a Syrian Jewish family. His family moved to Montreal, Canada, in 1953, in 1959, Safdie married Nina Nusynowicz. The couple had two children, a daughter and a son and his son Oren Safdie is a playwright who has written several plays about architecture including Private Jokes, Public Places. His daughter Taal is an architect in San Diego, a partner of the firm Safdie Rabines Architects, in 1961, Safdie graduated from McGill University with a degree in architecture. In 1981, Safdie married Michal Ronnen, a photographer, with whom he has two daughters, Carmelle and Yasmin, Carmelle Safdie is an artist, and Yasmin Safdie is a social worker. Safdie is the uncle of Dov Charney, founder and former CEO of American Apparel, after apprenticing with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, Safdie returned to Montreal to oversee the master plan for Expo 67. In 1964, he established his own firm to undertake Habitat 67, Habitat 67, which pioneered the design and implementation of three-dimensional, prefabricated units for living, was a central feature of Expo 67 and an important development in architectural history. He was awarded the 1967 Construction Man of the Year Award from the Engineering News Record, in 1970, Safdie opened a branch office in Jerusalem. Among the projects he has designed in Jerusalem are Yad Vashem and the Alrov Mamilla Quarter, which includes the Mamilla Mall, Davids Village luxury condominiums, from 1984 to 1989, he was the Ian Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Harvard. Moshe Safdies works are known for their dramatic curves, arrays of geometric patterns, use of windows and he said Safdie had studied Sikh religion for two years before designing the heritage museum. Safdie said he wanted the museum to look 300 years old and he thought he had succeeded in this objective. C. C. architravel. com/architravel/architects/safdie-architects/
5.
Julia Morgan
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Julia Morgan was an American architect in California. She designed more than 700 buildings in California during a long and she is best known for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. Morgan was the first woman to be admitted to the program at lÉcole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She designed many buildings for institutions serving women and girls including YWCA buildings and buildings for Mills College, Morgan embraced the Arts and Crafts Movement and used various producers of California pottery to adorn her buildings. Julia Morgan is the first woman to receive the AIA Gold Medal, Morgans father, Charles Bill Morgan, was born into a prominent East Coast family that included successful military men, politicians, and influential businessmen. He studied to be an engineer, then in 1867, he sailed for San Francisco, California, to speculate in mines. He returned the year to marry Eliza Woodland Parmelee, the favored daughter of Albert O. Parmelee. The wedding was in Brooklyn, New York, where she had grown up, as a wedding present, Parmelee gave his daughter an envelope full of money so that she could raise a family in comfort. He indicated that more money would follow, the newlyweds traveled to San Francisco and settled downtown in a family-oriented but luxurious residential hotel. In April 1870, a son was born and named Parmelee Morgan, on January 20,1872, Julia Morgan was born. Three more children were born to the family in Oakland, Charles Morgan was not successful in any of his business ventures, so the family relied upon money from grandfather Parmelee. Eliza Morgan ran the household with a hand, providing young Julia with a role model of womanly competence and independence. In mid-1878, Eliza took the children to live near the Parmelees in New York for a year while Charles worked in San Francisco, in New York, Julia was introduced to her older cousin Lucy Thornton, who was married to successful architect Pierre Le Brun. After returning to Oakland, Julia kept in contact with Le Brun, in New York, Julia also got sick with scarlet fever and was kept in bed for a few weeks. As a result of illness, throughout her adult life she was prone to ear infections. In July 1880, grandfather Parmelee died, soon, grandmother Parmelee moved into the Oakland house, bringing with her the Parmelee wealth. This reinforced Julias impression that women provided the foundation of social means, Morgan resisted her mothers suggestion that she have a debutante party to celebrate her availability for marriage. She argued that she should first gain a career and her parents were supportive of this wish
6.
Thom Mayne
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Thom Mayne is an American architect. He is based in Los Angeles, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 1972, where he is a trustee. Since then he has teaching positions at SCI-Arc, the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is principal of Morphosis, a firm in Santa Monica. Mayne received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in March 2005, Mayne was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. During that time he recalls that policy and planning were not going to work for me, the rift was due to differences between the dean at Cal Poly at the time and Ray Kappe, who headed the schools architecture department. The goal of the new institute was to reinvigorate formal architectural education with a sense of social conscience. SCI-Arc was “to bring to Los Angeles the critical attitude toward the profession that was being practiced at Cooper Union in New York, beginning as an informal collaboration of designers that survived on non-architectural projects, its first official commission was a school in Pasadena, attended by Maynes son. Publicity from this led to a number of residential commissions. Mayne describes the days of the group as more of a garage band than a practice. They spent their free time experimenting with new inventions for their clients, when work was at a standstill, Mayne took a year off to earn his Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University. He graduated in 1978 and returned to work for Morphosis where he became the architect, lead designer. The firm has grown into prominent design practice, with completed projects worldwide, under the Design Excellence program of the United States governments General Service Administration, Thom Mayne has become a primary architect for federal projects. Morse United States Courthouse in Eugene, Oregon, the work of Morphosis has a layered quality. Visually, the architecture includes sculptural forms. In recent years, such visual effect has made possible increasingly through computer design techniques. Mayne remains a presence in the academic world, currently, he is a tenured faculty member at the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. In 2013, he contributed a foreword to the book Never Built Los Angeles by Sam Lubell, among them are the Rome Prize Fellowship which he received in 1987 and the Pritzker Prize in 2005
7.
Steven Holl
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Steven Holl is a New York-based American architect and watercolorist. Holl was born on December 9,1947 and grew up in Bremerton and Manchester, Holl graduated from the University of Washington and pursued architecture studies in Rome in 1970. In 1976, he attended school at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. For ten years after moving to New York, Holl lived above his office in an apartment without hot water, Steven Holl leads his 40-person office with partners Chris McVoy and Noah Yaffe. Holl has taught at Columbia University since 1981, the shift came about partly due to his interest in the writings of philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and architect-theorist Juhani Pallasmaa. In 1998 Holl was awarded the prestigious Alvar Aalto Medal, in 2000, Holl was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In July 2001, Time named Holl America’s Best Architect, for buildings that satisfy the spirit as well as the eye, brunner Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 2008 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Arts category. In 2007, Steven Holl Architects received the AIA Institute Honor Award, the Higgins Hall Insertion at Pratt Institute and the New Residence at the Swiss Embassy both received the AIA New York Chapter Architecture Honor Award in 2007. In 2010, Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, was awarded the RIBA International Award, the Horizontal Skyscraper-Vanke Center received the 2011 AIA Institute National Honor Award, as well as the AIA NY Honor Award. In 2011, he was named a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council, and Holl was named the 2012 AIA Gold Medal winner. In 2014, Holl was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Prize for Architecture, in 2016, Holl was named the 2016 laureate for The Daylight and Building Component Award for Daylight in Architecture. Holl is a professor at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1981. He frequently teaches on the relationship between music and architecture, Holl won first prize in the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek International Library Design Competition in 1988, an expansion and renovation of the American Memorial Library in Berlin. In February,1989 Holls work was exhibited in a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. MoMA later purchased works by Holl for the museums permanent collection. In the 1992 competition for a new contemporary arts museum in Helsinki, Finland, Holls entry, entitled Chiasma, the museum opened to the public in 1998, having permanently adopted the name Kiasma, the Finnish translation of chiasma. New green campus quadrangles were formed to the north, west, and south, the plan of the chapel won a design award in the American Institute of Architects of New York. Holl designed the Chapel to symbolize seven bottles of light in a stone box, each volume represents a different part of Jesuit Catholic worship, and has differently colored glass so that various parts of the building are marked out by colored light
8.
Fumihiko Maki
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Fumihiko Maki is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, after studying at the University of Tokyo, graduating in 1952, he moved to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, graduating with a masters degree in 1953. He then studied at Harvard Graduate School of Design, graduating with a Master of Architecture degree in 1954 and this building remained his only completed work in the United States until 1993, when he completed the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts building in San Francisco. In 2006, he returned to Washington University in St. Louis to design the new home for the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, in 1960 he returned to Japan to help establish the Metabolism Group. He worked for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York City and for Sert Jackson and Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts and founded Maki, in 2006, he was invited to join the judging panel for an international design competition for the new Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. Maki designed a building for the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After completing a $330 million expansion of the United Nations building in Manhattan, while it has criticized his 51 Astor Place project as out of place, New York magazine called Tower 4 pretty exquisite. Maki will be designing the London campus of the Aga Khan University along with a centre as part of the Kings Cross development project. Steinberg Hall at Washington University Hillside Terrace work at Expo 70, with Kenzo Tange and others St. Louis, June 196410 Stories of Collective Housing, by a+t research group. Tokio, 1967-1998 Maki and Associates, official site Pritzker Prize – Fumiho Maki Interview with Fumihiko Maki Images of Tower 4, WTC
9.
Renzo Piano
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Renzo Piano, OMRI, OMCA is an Italian architect and engineer. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The Shard in London, and he won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998. Piano was born in Genoa, Italy, into a family of builders and his grandfather had created a masonry enterprise, which had been expanded by his father, Carlo Piano, and his fathers three brothers, into the firm Fratelli Piano. The firm prospered after World War II, constructing houses and factories, when his father retired the enterprise was led by Renzos older brother, Ermanno, who studied engineering at the University of Genoa. Renzo studied architecture at the Milan Polytechnic University and he graduated in 1964 with a dissertation about modular coordination supervised by Giuseppe Ciribini and began working with experimental lightweight structures and basic shelters. In 1970, he received his first international commission, for the Pavilion of Italian Industry for Expo 70 in Osaka and he collaborated with his brother Ermanno and the family firm, which manufactured the structure. It was lightweight and original composed of steel and reinforced polyester, the first project of the firm was the administrative building of B&B Italia, an Italian furniture company, in Novedrate, Como, Italy. This design featured suspended container and an open bearing structure, with the conduits for heating and these unusual features attracted considerable attention in the architectural world, and influenced the choice of the jurors who selected Piano and Rogers to design the Pompidou Center. The award came a surprise, to the world, since the two were little-known, and had no experience with museums or other major structures. The New York Times declared that their design turned the world upside down. The escalator, in a transparent tube, crossed the facade of the building at a diagonal, the building was an astonishing success, entirely transforming the character a run-down commercial section near the Marais in Paris, and made Piano one of the best-known architects in the world. The media dubbed the style of the building as high-tech, Beaubourg, he said, was a joyous urban machine, a creature which might have come out of a Jules Verne novel, a sort of bizarre boat in dry dock. It is a provocation, a challenge to academism. To consider it as an object is a mistake. In 1977 Piano ended his collaboration with Rogers and began a new collaboration with engineer Peter Rice and they established their offices in Genoa. One of their first projects was a plan for the rehabilitation of the old port of Otranto from a site into a commercial. Their first major building was the Menil Collection, in art museum for the art collector Dominique de Menil, the chief requirements of the owner for this building was to make the maximum use of natural light in the interiors. Piano wrote, Paradoxically, the Menil Collection, with its serenity, its calm, its discretion, is more modern, scientifically speaking
10.
2007 in architecture
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The year 2007 in architecture involved some significant events. January 20 – Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, WA, january 21 – The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa. February 28 – San Francisco Federal Building, by Morphosis, march 8 – Limoges Concert Hall, France, by Bernard Tschumi Architects. March 9 – New Wembley Stadium, London, march 23 – Pakistan Monument, Islamabad, designed by Arif Masoud. April 25 – IAC/InterActiveCorp headquarters opens in New York, by Gehry Partners, june 9 – Bloch Building, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art addition, Kansas City, Mo. by Steven Holl Architects. June – Pawilon Wyspiański 2000, Kraków, Poland, by Krzysztof Ingarden, august 9 – Roland Levinsky Building at the University of Plymouth, Devon, England, by Henning Larsen. October – Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, by David Adjaye, october 12 – Armed Forces Memorial, National Memorial Arboretum, Staffordshire, England, by Liam OConnor Architects and Planning Consultants. October 17 – BMW Welt exhibition facility in Munich, Germany, november 3 – Digital Beijing Building in China, by Pei Zhu. December 1 – The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, december 10 – Inauguration of Gare de Marseille-Saint-Charles major reconstruction as a transportation interchange in France. Manchester Civil Justice Centre by Denton Corker Marshall, beetham Tower, Manchester by Ian Simpson. Kolumba in Cologne, Germany, designed by Peter Zumthor, wachendorf-Feldkapelle-Bruder-Klaus, Germany, designed by Peter Zumthor. FiftyTwoDegrees in Nijmegen, designed by Mecanoo, the Lighthouse, Watford, Britains first zero-carbon house, designed by Sheppard Robson. May 30 – The Saitta House at Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, june 26 - The Museum of the History of Polish Jews groundbreaking ceremony is held in Warsaw. The building was completed in 2013, july 21 – Construction of Burj Khalifa surpasses the height of Taipei 101 to become the tallest building in the world at 818m. Arch Moscow AIA Gold Medal – Edward Larrabee Barnes Architecture Firm Award – Leers Weinzapfel Associates Architects BNA Building of the Year - Vesteda Tower Driehaus Architecture Prize – Jaquelin T
