Each year, the passing of an architect offers a moment to reflect on their legacy, revisiting the impact of their work while capturing the essence of their career through the perspectives of colleagues and peers, alongside a record of their achievements.
In reviewing their impact, we (too) often can't resist the push to distill these lives into broad categories—icons, innovators, or pioneers—yet the true depth of their contributions can never be fully captured in simple terms or short paragraphs. Architecture, just as the people who shape it, is an ever-evolving and complex discipline, often too expansive to be contained by a single narrative.
Once again, we honor their legacies, remembering not just their most visible works, but the enduring impact they had on the world of design education and the world beyond. What follows is a recap in tribute to some of the influential architects, landscape architects, theorists, planners, and the other leading figures and familiar faces we said goodbye to in 2024.
Maki, one of the list's biggest names and a past winner of the Pritzker Prize, passed at age 95 in June and will be remembered as one of the founding fathers of Metabolic architecture leading its expansion both at home and abroad. Significant projects include the Brutalist Nagoya University Toyoda Memorial Hall (his first in Japan) and the later MIT Media Lab expansion from 2009. Other headline designs such as the San Francisco Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Aga Khan Museum in Toronto helped cement his architectural legacy, which the Pritzker Prize committee described as "representing the age-old qualities of his native country while at the same time juxtaposing contemporary construction methods and materials" in their official 1993 citation.
Fournier was known as the co-founder (along with Sir Peter Cook) of the tremendously influential firm Archigram. He was best known for the firm’s 2003 Kunsthaus Graz and his collaboration with Bernard Tschumi on the design of Parc de la Villette in Paris. A parallel career in academia was just as highly regarded. Fournier joined the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture faculty in 1998 and was remembered as having “inspired generations of students for almost two decades with his distinctive approach to design” by the institution upon the announcement of his passing in September.
A close friend of Archinect's and a dedicated educator who touched countless lives during her time at Ball State University, Shimizu, was also an admired figure through her work elevating Japanese cultural considerations in her hometown of Manitoba. Outside of academia, she founded what is now the widely-recognized studio Shimizu + Coggeshall Architects (S+Ca) with her husband Josh Coggeshall after entering practice under Thom Mayne with Morphosis.
Donna Sink has shared the following thoughts with Archinect after her passing this spring: "Janice was not only deeply respected but deeply loved by her colleagues and by hundreds of students. Her inner calm and attentive presence made everyone she spoke with feel seen. Janice taught by example, transmitting her love of architecture through her joyful, curious approach to building of all kinds, guiding her students with hands-on making projects and helping each student to explore where their interest led them. Her influence will continue well beyond her too-short life."
Victor Lundy, the affable World War II veteran and accomplished watercolorist joined Paul Rudolph and other figures in leading the illustrious Sarasota Modern group with an “optimistic spirit" for the possibilities of architecture. Lundy used his G.I. Bill funding to study under Walter Gropius at Harvard. His religious commissions—including the First Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut, and the St. Paul Lutheran Church in Sarasota—have been preserved among his best-known designs.
True to the iconoclastic character she so artfully self-designed, Apfel died a very rich old lady with a residence in Palm Beach and an apartment on Park Avenue. The Queens native was an Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award winner and enjoyed the company of many top artistic minds, such as Karl Lagerfeld. Gucci, Wes Anderson, and Theaster Gates count among her many other admirers. She also taught a textile design course at the University of Texas at Austin in 2011.
Rykwert’s legendary intellect and passion for well-designed urbanism propelled a career in academia that touched the lives of many significant architects and his fellow academic theorists. He was cited widely by the supporters in the field who shared his resentments toward modernism, and eventually won the 2014 RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in honor of such contributions. Rykwert was the Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design for ten years until his retirement in 1998.
The longtime UC Berkeley professor is credited with pioneering several concepts integral to green architecture. His offbeat instructional methods, combined with a view of architecture as a sustainable creative practice and buildings as a complete ecological system, were prescient and widely affirmed by the time of his passing in October at the age of 89. Dean Renee Y. Chow described him as "one of the people who laid the foundation for CED’s ongoing commitment to resilience and environmental equity."
It’s hard to put into words the impact that the Moody Nolan namesake had on the architecture community in terms of being a mentor for future practitioners. His built projects, too, showcased a progressive will and desire to uplift marginalized groups in different regions. As the leader of the largest African-American-owned architecture firm in the United States, Moody carried a torch for many other Black architects concerned with effecting the same tenets of progress. He last spoke to us in 2020 about the early obstacles and personal determination that would later lead to his firm’s 2021 AIA Architecture Firm Award win. His legacy lives on under the direction of his son Jonathan with 12 offices and 230 employees nationwide.
Before succumbing to a battle with ALS in February, the Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects founding principal earned the admiration of her colleagues across the industry as a champion of environmental concerns and the holistic approach to architecture after 1989. Among the honors earned by her quiet leadership skills during that time include the 2017 AIA Firm Award and multiple AIA COTE Top Ten honors.
"Marsha’s vision, mentorship, and generative force to get things done lifted many of us, helping us to see and realize the positive change that is possible. She helped us understand what we — and architects together — can do to change the world and empower the next generation," HKS Principal Julie Hiromoto remembered fondly.
Maytum also co-authored the title Purpose: A Guide to Mission Driven Design, which was published last year.
The long-tenured University of New Mexico faculty member and 2006 AIA Gold Medal winner left a void in the state’s arts-rich community with the announcement of his death this March at the age of 87. His diverse body of work—including the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, and Petco Park MLB stadium in San Diego—propelled him to celebrity status outside the state. Predock was married to the sculptor Constance DeJong and operated an office in Taiwan successfully for many years.
Pesce was a legendary furniture designer and provocateur of conditioned spaces who became one of the Radical Design movement’s leading figures before his death in April at the age of 84. His not-so-subtly politically-motivated Up5 chair designs helped him earn early acclaim in left-leaning Italian intellectual circles of the 1970s, and he continued to practice through a studio operation while teaching at the Pratt Institute until his passing despite several health setbacks.
The Italian design world lost another legendary figure with the passing of Pininfarina in April at the age of 65. He was a design obsessive who recently helped expand the architectural footprint of his family’s multi-generational car company outside of Turin and into the North American market after the passing of his older brother Andrea in 2008. Pininfarina also personally authored more than 600 car designs after completing his degree in engineering studies at the Polytechnic University in his home city in the 1980s.
Art and architecture simply would not be the same bereft of his contributions and commitment to exploring and displaying the physical forces of nature through experimentations using lead and later steel as an organizer of space. His legacy will live on through resonant and monumental masterworks that were gracefully conferred onto the grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Dia Beacon, and the Glenstone Museum. It will also be felt piecemeal in the many designs of his many acolytes such as Thomas Phifer and Peter Eisenman. As he said famously: "There are comparable overlaps in the language between sculpture and architecture, between painting and architecture. Architects are higher in the pecking order than sculptors, we all know that, but they can't have it both ways."
A true intellectual who imparted lessons taken from his student days at RISD in the late 70s onto the New York design world beginning in 1986, Beers was a well-respected and successful designer of exquisite interior spaces for private and hospitality clients. Beers frequently credited his former Fulbright program mentor Oscar Niemeyer as being an influence and also worked briefly for I.M. Pei before founding his studio. The operation he left behind, Jeffrey Beers International (JBI), continues to spread his legacy today under partners Tim Rooney, Nora Liu-Kanter, and Michael Pandolf.
The Autodesk founder contributed mightily to the architecture field via his development of AutoCAD software, which has in turn helped direct its trajectory since its first implementation in 1982. It has since grown into one of the world’s ten largest software companies. Walker continued to influence its success as a software designer until 1994. We grappled with the guiding influence of computer-aided design on the architecture industry for a recent feature.
Thornton was known as one-half (along with Richard Tomasetti) of the structural engineering consultancy Thornton Tomasetti, which has been behind some of the world’s first supertall skyscraper designs world’s first supertall designs — including Malaysia’s Petronas Towers and the Taipei 101 in Taiwan. As its CEO, the firm grew into a top ten outfit globally by the time of his death last December. He was honored with the Fazlur R. Khan Lifetime Achievement Medal by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) in 2012.
Solomon’s name will forever be associated with the utopian Sea Ranch community in which she executed the first of her pioneering Supergraphics paintings after meeting Lawrence Halprin in 1968. She was later recognized by the AIA's now-defunct Industrial Arts Medal in 1970, and became a longtime faculty member at UC Berkeley after completing her master's studies there in 1981. Solomon also taught design studios at Yale and Harvard. A short documentary treatment of her life followed later in 2018.
Oubrerie was recognizable as one of the last surviving members of Le Corbusier’s studio and taught with distinction at The Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture for many years. Steven Holl, writing in a tribute published to his firm’s website after Oubrerie's passing in March, said: "Now at a time where architecture seems to have drifted into commercial activity with firms of hundreds of people, he reminded us that in the office of Le Corbusier, at the end, there were only six employees. His dedication to architecture came with a jolly sense of humor and an enormous bank of stories, which shall be passed down by many as dedicated as he was."
A 2014 feature interview between Oubrerie and Archinect senior contributing writer Orhan Ayyüce can be read in full here.
Be sure to follow Archinect's special End of the Year coverage by following the tag 2024 Year In Review to stay up to date.
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Yoshio Taniguchi
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