Archinect - News

Miami Herald obituary writer pens a farewell to the Miami Herald building

2013-05-17T13:52:00-04:00

One Herald Plaza, the bayfront behemoth from which generations of journalists fanned out across South Florida — and at times the world — to cover the news, passed into history on Thursday after succumbing to a real estate deal. … She was 60.

Architect Rick Mather has died at the age of 75

2013-04-22T15:10:00-04:00

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Rick Mather on Saturday 20 April 2013 after a short illness.

Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Mexican Architect, Dies at 94

2013-04-18T12:28:00-04:00

Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, the architect who led many of Mexico’s landmark Modernist construction projects of the mid-20th century, including museums, the country’s largest sports stadium and the shrine that attracts its most important religious pilgrimage, died on Tuesday, his 94th birthday, in Mexico City.

Visionary architect Paolo Soleri has died at 93

2013-04-09T17:45:00-04:00

Visionary architect Paolo Soleri,the Italian-born designer of the experimental Arizona city near Cordes Junction called Arcosanti, died Tuesday. He was 93. Arcosanti officials confirmed the death in a statement. Soleri, one of the last living direct disciples of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed a $3.5 million pedestrian bridge in Scottsdale - Soleri Bridge & Plaza, the only completed bridge of the hundreds he designed. It is located southwest of Camelback and Scottsdale roads.

Balthazar Korab - R.I.P.

2013-01-27T18:32:00-05:00

“I am an architect with a passion for nature’s lessons and man’s interventions” was how Mr. Korab described himself in a statement on his Web site, balthazarkorab.com.

Yesterday Jan 26th, David Dunlap reported that Balthazar Korab's death had been confirmed by his wife. Mr. Korab, one of the leading architectural photographers in the period after World War II, died on Jan. 15 in Royal Oak, Mich, at age 86. Mr. Korab’s archive is housed at the Library of Congress.

Architecture Critic Ada Louise Huxtable Dies

2013-01-07T19:22:00-05:00

Ada Louise Huxtable, the dean of American architecture critics, died Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. She was 91.

'Great educator' Alan Colquhoun dies aged 91

2012-12-14T15:40:00-05:00

Colquhoun (1921-2012) was credited with inspiring a generation of architects who he taught at the Architectural Association between 1957 and 64. He studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and AA before working for the London County Council in the 1950s. He started Colquhoun & Miller, a partnership with architect John Miller, in 1961.

'The most original Czech architect of our times', Jiri Stritecky, 58, passed away yesterday

2012-12-06T12:42:00-05:00

"He was the most original architect of our times, in (Ceske) Budejovice, in the southern Czech region, even in the entire (Czech) Republic." Martin Krupauer "V současnosti to je nejoriginálnější architekt, který v Budějovicích, jižních Čechách i v celé republice byl,"

Jiri Stritecky passed away at the young age of 58, in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic, of cancer. He was a partner, with Martin Krupauer, of the creative Czech architecture firm Atelier 8000. His ideas and approach to design were inspired by nature, and by his wonder and love of life itself. He will be missed by his colleagues, his friends around the world and his students.

Master Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer passes away at 104

2012-12-05T19:16:00-05:00

"I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. I am attracted to free-flowing, sensual curves. The curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman. Curves make up the entire Universe, the curved Universe of Einstein." - Oscar Niemeyer, 2000, The Curves of Time: The Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer

We are sad to announce that one of history's most talented, dedicated, inspirational, and passionate architects has passed away at the age of 104 years, 10 days before his 105th birthday. Oscar Niemeyer has been in and out of the hospital a number of times this year due to complications related to various health issues, while never letting his focus deviate from his life's work.

Some photos of Oscar Niemeyer, and his work, throughout the years...

Ministries Esplanade with several of Niemeyer's buildings: the Nati...

Editor's Picks #288

2012-11-05T23:50:00-05:00

In 2012, the DRX (The Design Research Exchange a non-profit residency program for researchers hosted by HENN Architekten) took place in Berlin from July 16th, 2012 through September 7th, 2012. Participants included four invited DRX Experts and eight invited DRX Researchers all of whom focused on the topic Minimal Surface Highrise Structures. As part of the DRX 2012, three prototypic 500m (1,640ft) tall Highrise Structures were developed as so-called ProtoTowers.

The latest edition of the Working out of the Box series features Skip Schwartz who is currently the CEO of a heath care service/technology company that provides primary healthcare to people mostly on a virtual basis. The two main lessons that he gained from architecture school and the architecture industry were that "Design counts" and "Project management counts".

News
The world lost three very talented architects last week including, Lebbeus Woods dead at 72, John M. Johansen the last surviving member of the Harvard...

Italian architect Gae Aulenti dies at 85

2012-11-01T12:18:00-04:00

Italian architect, designer and teacher Gae Aulenti died late on Wednesday at her Milan home. She was 85 years old and had been ill for some time. Born in Palazzolo della Stella near the northern city of Udine, Aulenti trained as an architect at Milan's Polytechnical University graduating in 1959 and quickly became one of the few well-recognized women working in Italian postwar design.

Lebbeus Woods dead at 72

2012-10-30T12:46:00-04:00

Deeply sorry to have just heard that Lebbeus Woods, a true visionary architect and astonishing draftsman, died this morning. A great loss.

Michael Kimmelman, Architecture critic for the NY Times, is reporting this morning, via Twitter, that Lebbeus Woods died in his sleep last night in New York. Details are still emerging.

John M. Johansen, Last of ‘Harvard Five’ Architects, Dies at 96

2012-10-28T16:10:00-04:00

John M. Johansen, a celebrated Modernist architect and the last surviving member of the Harvard Five, a group that made New Canaan, Conn., a hotbed of architectural experimentation in the 1950s and ’60s, died on Friday in Brewster, Mass. He was 96.

Brutalist architect, Ulrich Franzen, dies at 91

2012-10-13T18:46:00-04:00

Not everyone liked the skywalks, which connect buildings Mr. Franzen designed at Hunter College on Lexington Avenue. Neighbors lamented the loss of sunlight. But Mr. Franzen, a Modernist subscriber to the form-follows-function credo, considered them the functional equivalent of ivy-covered walkways for urban students. It would “become the college community’s main street,” he wrote of the skywalk plan in 1972 in the college’s student newspaper, “well above rush-hour traffic at street level.”

RIP Bud Goldstone, the Hero Who Saved Watts Towers

2012-09-24T20:32:00-04:00

Bud Goldstone (1926-2012), a former aerospace engineer who worked for over 50 years to save Watts Towers, has died at the age of 86. In 1959 he devised the test to prove the Towers were structurally sound and stopped the City of Los Angeles from demolishing them. He was a founding member of the Committee for Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts, Inc., which successfully sued the city in 1985 to save the Towers from the city's neglect.

Peter Shelton, Architect Who Made Luxury Minimal, Dies at 67

2012-09-04T17:25:00-04:00

Mr. Shelton and his longtime design partner, Lee Mindel, were known for a distinctive modernist aesthetic that blended clean lines with references to classical periods to create opulent settings. Their less-is-more sensibility became a hallmark for apartments ringing Central Park. “Truly they were leaders in their field,” said Margaret Russell, the editor in chief of Architectural Digest. “They won pretty much every award a firm could win.

Walter Pichler, an Artist Who Bucked the Status Quo, Dies at 75

2012-07-29T18:27:00-04:00

Mr. Pichler was a sculptor and illustrator whose ... architectural drawings were not just plans; they were also works of art in and of themselves. Other images — “dream drawings,” as he called them — were dark and psychologically loaded. His figures were often skeletal or robotic.

Gerhard Kallmann, Brutalist Architect, Dies at 97

2012-06-26T18:01:00-04:00

Gerhard Kallmann, the architect who, with Michael McKinnell, designed Boston City Hall, a hulking, asymmetrical, Modernist building that has been widely acclaimed by architects for half a century though disparaged by many Bostonians, died on Tuesday in Boston. He was 97.

Günther Domenig (1934-2012)

2012-06-20T14:47:00-04:00

“He was an extremely talented architect who deserved to be better known but he wasn’t on the circuit and only spoke German,” said former chair of architecture at the Bartlett, Peter Cook. “In a way he was the architectural equivalent of Walter Pichler - he was an exponent of that kind of Austrian art. His bank was an extraordinary piece both formalistically and surface-wise.”

Hillman Curtis, a Pioneer in Web Design, Dies at 51

2012-04-23T13:58:00-04:00

Hillman Curtis, a former rock musician who became a prominent first-generation Web designer and a visionary figure in the Internet’s evolution from a predominantly text-based medium to the multimedia platform it is today, died on Wednesday at his home in Brooklyn. He was 51.

Very sad. Hillman Curtis was an extremely talented designer that I closely followed while growing up in the web. Too young.

Check out his "Artist Series" profile on Daniel Libeskind.

Also, Remembering Hillman Curtis, by Gary Hustwit, filmmaker of Helvetica, Objectified and Urbanized.

Luis Moreno Mansilla passed away

2012-02-22T18:35:00-05:00

Spanish architect Luis Moreno Mansilla has passed away at the age of 53. Mansilla was a founding partner of Mansilla+Tuñón, whose work includes the Fine Arts Museum in Castellón, the Auditorium of Leon, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla and Leon MUSAC, which received the Mies van der Rohe Prize. Mansilla, was a professor at the School of Architecture in Madrid, and had been a Visiting Professor at Princeton University.

This is incredibly sad. He was part of the most promising office in Spain. I saw him lecturing in Princeton while I was a student there, and he was extremely intelligent. But most of all he was a very kind soul, something difficult to find these days in this business.

Eugene Weston III obituary: Modernist architect dies at 87

2012-02-13T16:25:00-05:00

Modernist architect Eugene Weston III was in his early 30s when he declared that "the house is the last of the handcrafted objects" in an industrial age... The architect built a number of homes in and around Pasadena but only one in Eagle Rock, in 1953, for Norman Bilderback, then a director of design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

HOK principal Gerry Gilmore dies

2012-02-10T18:13:00-05:00

Mr. Gilmore's specialty was marketing. During his 40 years with HOK, he helped the firm grow from a young St. Louis architectural office into a national and global powerhouse. He played a key role in public projects including the America's Center and its expansion, the Edward Jones Dome, the Thomas Eagleton U.S. Courthouse, the St. Louis County Justice Center, Terminal 2 at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill.

Norma Merrick Sklarek obituary: Pioneering African American architect was 85

2012-02-10T14:22:00-05:00

Norma Merrick Sklarek, the first African American woman in the country to become a licensed architect, who helped produce Terminal 1 at Los Angeles International Airport and the American Embassy in Tokyo, died Monday at her home in Pacific Palisades. She was 85.

Anne Tyng, 91, groundbreaking architect

2012-01-07T11:03:00-05:00

Anne Tyng, a pioneering woman architect whose ideas about geometry influenced Louis Kahn's buildings and who later had a child with him, died Tuesday, Dec. 27, in Greenbrae, Calif. She was 91, said her daughter, Alexandra, who lives outside Philadelphia. Although Ms. Tyng was among the first group of women to graduate from Harvard University's architecture school in 1944, she struggled her entire career to be taken seriously. Firms would not hire her because she was a woman.

Eva Zeisel, Ceramic Artist and Designer, Dies at 105

2012-01-03T16:46:31-05:00

Eva Zeisel, a ceramic artist whose elegant, eccentric designs for dinnerware in the 1940s and ’50s helped to revolutionize the way Americans set their tables, died on Friday in New City, N.Y. She was 105.

Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, disciple of Luis Barragan, dies at 80

2011-12-31T01:52:02-05:00

Legorreta continued the tradition of architect Luis Barragan, who died in 1988. Like Barragan, Legorreta used bright colors, massive solid walls, courtyards and geometric cutout windows to interact with Mexico’s abundant sunlight.

Chicago architect Gene Summers dies

2011-12-13T18:29:07-05:00

Chicago architect Gene Summers, the former dean of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the chief designer of the muscular McCormick Place convention hall, died Monday. Summers also served as a right-hand man for Mies van der Rohe, working on such significant projects as the Seagram Building in New York.

Southern California architect dies at 83

2011-10-10T15:17:49-04:00

Anthony J. Lumsden, a prolific Southern California architect who helped develop new ways of wrapping buildings in smooth glass skins, accelerating a shift that reshaped skylines around the world, died Sept. 22 in Los Angeles. He was 83.

Norman Foster's Tribute to Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T14:50:35-04:00

He was the ultimate perfectionist and demanded of himself as he demanded of others. We are better as individuals and certainly wiser as architects through the experience of the last two years and more of working for him. His participation was so intense and creative that our memory will be that of working with one of the truly great designers and mentors.