Archinect - News

Henry Hope Reed, Architecture Historian, Dies at 97

2013-05-03T13:38:00-04:00

Henry Hope Reed, an architecture critic and historian whose ardent opposition to modernism was purveyed in books, walking tours of New York City and a host of curmudgeonly barbs directed at advocates of the austere, the functional and unornamented in public buildings and spaces, died Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 97.

Graham T. Downes, San Diego Architect, dies following fight with employee

2013-04-29T16:19:00-04:00

San Diego architect Graham T. Downes died on April 21 from injuries following a late-night fight two days before with an employee outside his San Diego home. He was 55. Downes suffered blunt force head and neck trauma, including numerous skull fractures, from the altercation with Higinio Soriano Salgado, according to the San Diego County coroner's report.

What a tragic story. Here's a letter from letter from his firm.

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.

Tribute to Oscar Niemeyer by Norman Foster

2012-12-06T11:14:00-05:00

I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Oscar Niemeyer. He was an inspiration to me – and to a generation of architects. Few people get to meet their heroes and I am grateful to have had the chance to spend time with him in Rio last year.

For architects schooled in the mainstream Modern Movement, he stood accepted wisdom on its head. Inverting the familiar dictum that ‘form follows function’, Niemeyer demonstrated instead that, ‘When a form creates beauty it becomes functional and therefore fundamental in architecture’.

It is said that when the pioneering Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin visited Brasilia he likened the experience to landing on a different planet. Many people seeing Niemeyer’s city for the first time must have felt the same way. It was daring, sculptural, colourful and free - and like nothing else that had gone before. Few architects in recent history have been able to summon such a vibrant vocabulary and structure it into such a brilliantly communicative and seductive tectonic language.

One cannot contemplate Brasilia’s crown-like cathedral, for example, without being thrilled both by its formal dynamism and its structural economy, which combine to engender a sense almost of weightlessness from ...

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...

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.

Pedro Guerrero, FLW's photographer, Dies at 95

2012-09-14T19:06:00-04:00

Pedro E. Guerrero, a former art school dropout who showed up in the dusty Arizona driveway of Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939, boldly declared himself a photographer and then spent the next half-century working closely with him, capturing his modernist architecture on film, died on Thursday at his home in Florence, Ariz. He was 95.

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.

Brian Henry, SCI-Arc student, jumps to his death

2012-07-05T17:27:00-04:00

A 29-year-old man jumped to his death last night from a parking structure at The Grove in Los Angeles, police said. The incident occurred at the outdoor mall around 7:30 p.m., according to Officer Karen Rayner of the Los Angeles Police Department.

It has just been confirmed that last week's jumper at LA's popular shopping area "The Grove" was SCI-Arc student Brian Henry (not to be confused with Archinect blogger Brian Henry). Our thoughts go out to his family, friends and schoolmates.

* Above photo was taken by Brian, via his Flickr stream

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.

Euthanasia Coaster by Julijonas Urbonas

2012-02-28T18:26:00-05:00

“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death.

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.

Legendary Artist Mike Kelley Dead at 58, an Apparent Suicide

2012-02-01T15:25:00-05:00

Artist Mike Kelley has passed away at his home in Los Angeles, having apparently taken his own life. The tragic news was confirmed to BLOUIN ARTINFO by Helene Winer, of New York's Metro Pictures gallery, a long-time associate of the artist.

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.