Each year, the industry loses a host of leading figures whose careers as practitioners, educators, theorists, and writers have brought architecture and design to the place it occupies today. Annual remembrances are a valuable means of examining the luminaries and thought leaders who gifted us with award-winning architecture, groundbreaking intellectual dialogue, and social achievements. This year’s list was no exception.
Below is a summary of the prominent figures we said goodbye to in 2022.
Known for the optimism and complexity of his detail-oriented designs, Bofill’s work was shaped early on by the changing political landscape of his native country before evolving in scale, materials usage, and vernacular inspiration by the dawn of the new Millennium that would bare some of his best-received buildings. Walden 7, La Fábrica, La Muralla Roja, and his 1997 design for the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya were among the projects that cemented his reputation as an enigmatic icon of European postmodernism. Likewise, his studio’s output has become a popular subject in the era of social media.
The HOK co-founder’s vision benefitted from his early career tutelage at SOM and later under fellow first-generation Japanese-American architect Minoru Yamasaki. Designs as varied as the National Air and Space Museum and Priory Chapel at Saint Louis Abbey paved the way for the firm to grow into one of the industry’s largest and most financially successful practices. Obata retired in 2012 with a portfolio that included several airport commissions, religious structures, civic buildings, and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library that, like his former professor Eero Saarinen, helped spur the development of modern architecture in the Midwest region and beyond.
Despite his name eventually being dropped from the moniker in one of many firm restructures, Rauch was a truly instrumental founding figure of American postmodernism through his work with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown until the late 80s. He contributed to the early development of breakthrough projects like the Vanna Venturi House, New Haven Fire Station #4, and subsequent higher-ed commissions that significantly altered the trajectory of architecture until the end of the century.
“John had a large personality, an ironic sense of humor, and a detailed grasp of the technics of architecture,” Scott Brown remembered fondly via email. “But he was also an artist.”
Starting out as a small operation in Boston following his graduation from Harvard in the early 1960s, Payette’s hard work and humanism were well-suited for the higher-ed and hospital designs that turned into the bread and butter of the award-winning firm he became the leader of at just 33 years of age. Projects such as the Aga Khan University Hospital and Medical College and Science and Engineering Complex at Northeastern University followed, cementing a legacy that “transformed healthcare architecture into healthcare 'design' — into architecture with a capital ‘A,’” according to the assessment of his understudy and current Payette Principal George Marsh, Jr.
Born in South Africa, Diamond went on to become one of the leading figures in the golden era of Canadian architecture. With Donald Schmitt, Diamond pursued a progressive approach to architecture and urban reform that was both demonstrative and “profound,” to use the words of his business partner. Projects like Toronto’s Richmond Hill Library and the Life Sciences Center at McGill University gave them a gilded reputation both within and outside of Canada. A fitting Gold Medal from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) finally gave their work credence in 2001.
Another Canadian immigré who helped leave a mark on the country through the design of over 1,000 mostly-public buildings and long tenure as an adjunct instructor at the University of Toronto. The original architect of the soon-to-be-remade Ontario Place “approached his work with a strong technical ability combined with humanist sensibilities,” according to his now four-office eponymous firm. Toronto’s Mayor John Tory added that Zeidler was a “great talent” who left the city “better for his creativity and commitment to excellent design.”
Provencher’s constant commitment to bettering every life and the visual landscape of his native Montreal garnered his admission as a Knight of the Ordre national du Québec in 2021. Award-winning designs for the Montreal World Trade Centre complex and Hornstein Pavilion for Peace at the city’s Museum of Fine Arts preceded the honor. In a firm statement, Provencher_Roy said: “What the city inspired him to do, Claude Provencher has returned a hundredfold with beauty, sensitivity, and modesty.”
Known throughout Germany as the prominent architect behind the beloved (now defunct) Berlin Tegel Airport, von Gerkan’s partnership with former classmate Volkwin Marg in 1965 eventually grew into the 600-staff von Gerkan, Marg + Partners with additional offices located in China and Vietnam. On the news of his passing earlier this month, GMP said: “We [lost] a strong personality and an uncompromising proponent of the principles of dialogue-based design.”
The designer of D.C’s Newseum and the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, AR, Polshek’s contributions to architecture and public design were characterized by an open-minded approach to forms, typology, and an independent aversion to the pull of ideologies. Polshek cut his teeth for I.M. Pei in Paris and later went on to found Ennead before serving as the dean of the Columbia GSAPP. His long body of work earned an AIA Gold Medal in 2018, among more than 200 other awards. Speaking to Architectural Record, former firm partner Richard Olcott said he was simply “ahead of his time.”
Genser designed some of Los Angeles’ most important and publicized residential projects at mid-century, including the Cole House, Hollywood Boathouses, Eagle's Watch, and the iconic 1957 Wave House in Malibu. His efforts helped bring nuance to the area’s conventional form of modernism while staying in touch with its vernacular as a constant source of inspiration. “I think that we have a great responsibility as architects to consider especially the environment, and I can’t think of a house that I have done that hasn’t been in total compatibility with the environment,” he said, describing the philosophy behind his dream homes. His son added that the results were “the stuff of fairy tale books.”
The Brininstool + Lynch co-founder was beloved throughout Chicago for award-winning projects completed with the help of fellow former Pappageorge Haymes colleague David Brininstool after 1989. A passionate educator, Lynch held positions at the erstwhile School of Architecture at Taliesin, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and his alma mater Syracuse. IIT’s College of Architecture College of Architecture dean Reed Kroloff said he contributed “some of the best [designs] built in this city over the last 30 years.”
Moore’s career-long battle against Washington, D.C.’s boxy staid vernacular architecture was expressed in his many curvilinear “Industrial Baroque” designs, including the prestigious Madeira School, The Cairo tower, and Washington Harbour development. He also led an award-winning renovation of the Library of Congress's main Thomas Jefferson and John Adams buildings, telling a Post reporter in 1990 that the “only true award in architecture is when hundreds of people make your buildings real.”
Recognized as the pioneering designer of the masterly-poured concrete Miami Marine Stadium, Candela also was well-regarded for his dual campus plans for Miami Dade College that gave the tropical Art Deco capital a Brutalist edge. “Hilario was an inspiration to many of us who grew up in Miami, as well as to our parents who grew up in Cuba,” a local politician said, speaking of the $45 million effort to preserve the stadium. “The best thing we can do to preserve his legacy is simply to bring [it] back to its full glory for a new generation of Miamians who’ve never had the pleasure to directly experience his visionary aesthetic.”
Forbes co-founded Pentagram in 1972 after a successful start in London. The firm has gone on to contribute vastly in the field of corporate design and today counts major firms like FR-EE, RSHP, and RAMSA (as well as the AIA) as some of its many clients. “He understood how design can be an invaluable asset to commerce and be distinctive, fresh, eclectic, and driven by ideas,” Pentagram’s Michael Gericke offered. “Colin Forbes shaped Pentagram's unique and enduring structure for our intuitive and idiosyncratic partners to create work as individuals within a collective framework that has stature, collegiality, and business acumen.”
The founder of Princeton Architectural Press (PAP) made a place between diametric opposites Yale and Rizzoli. His company was the first to publish the works of then-unknown designers like Steven Holl, Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Zaha Hadid, and Tom Kundig. Best-sellers like Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type and Lebbeus Woods' influential War and Architecture followed. Now in its 41st year of operation, PAP is still producing titles that are “interesting, handsome, well-edited, and well-made,” in a direct reflection of the high standards Lippert's leadership style was said to evince.
The UC Berkeley professor was seen as a pioneering design theorist and early proponent of New Urbanism. His seminal 1973 title, A Pattern Language, is still included widely in many university curricula, along with 1975’s The Oregon Experiment. Alexander is also considered the brains behind the software engineering concept that led to Wikipedia’s eventual development in 2001 and was awarded an AIA Gold Medal in recognition of his multifaceted career.
Reavis was known as a tireless advocate for change and an influential mentor of young design professionals. Reavis held academic posts around California and at his alma mater Howard University in addition to leadership positions with the AIA San Francisco and the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA).
“He was a proud HU alumni who generously gave his time and energy to support the next generation, and he would frequently walk through the studios conducting on the spot project & portfolio critiques, sparing no tough words for those students who he believed could push themselves to higher standards, myself included,” NOMA President Jason Pugh remembered. “This always stuck with me, and in many ways inspired me to give back to the school upon graduation, as I tried to emulate the awesome example Prescott set for others to follow.”
Revered throughout the cultural world as the “architect of high fashion,” the Hiroshima native broke onto the scene in the 1970s with captivating runway presentations and the seminal title East meets West in 1978. A 1983 collaboration with photographer Irving Penn served as the lynchpin for a further breakthrough into the high-end market, joined by fellow avant-garde Japanese designers that also rose to prominence during the decade. Collaborations with Frank Gehry, Arata Isozaki, Zaha Hadid, and Tadao Ando went far in establishing his name in architectural circles. He will be remembered as much as the designer of Steve Jobs’ iconic wardrobe staple as he will for later experimentations with industrial textile production that made him and his myriad brands the undisputed champions of material and form.
A “modern-day Thucydides” who chronicled Southern California's cultural, scientific, political, and urban history, Davis’ writing interrogated architecture’s encroachments into the natural world while challenging those in power whom he never forgave for promulgating an environmental crisis that can be seen getting markedly worse by the year.
“Our ruling classes everywhere have no rational analysis or explanation for the immediate future,” he said in parting. “A small group of people have more concentrated power over the human future than ever before in human history, and they have no vision, no strategy, no plan. It’s not just global warming, and drought, it’s the fact that two-thirds of the new homes built in the American west are in high fire-hazard areas, and the Democrats refuse to talk about a moratorium on construction or even rolling back construction in the urban-wildlife interface.”
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