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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.
— azcentral.com
“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. — NYT
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... View full entry
Ada Louise Huxtable, the dean of American architecture critics, died Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. She was 91. — online.wsj.com
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.
— architectsjournal.co.uk
"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,"
— Lidove Noviny
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... View full entry
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. — fosterandpartners.com
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... View full entry
"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... View full entry
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. — ansamed.info
Deeply sorry to have just heard that Lebbeus Woods, a true visionary architect and astonishing draftsman, died this morning. A great loss. — michael kimmelman
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. View full entry
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. — nytimes.com
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.” — nytimes.com
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.
— kcet.org
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. — nytimes.com
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.
— nytimes.com
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. — New York Times
