Bulfinch,Charles (1763-1844), is generally considered New England's greatest architect. Bulfinch's buildings show the influence of classical simplicity and restraint. He helped introduce the Federal style, which dominated American architecture until 1820. Bulfinch's designs include churches, homes, and public buildings, including the statehouses of Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts. Bulfinch served as an architect for the Capitol in Washington, D.C. His most influential works were the beautiful houses he designed on Boston's Beacon Hill and in other New England towns. Bulfinch was born in Boston. Thomas Bulfinch, his son, was a popular writer. Contributor: Leland M. Roth, Ph.D., Marion Dean Ross Prof. of Architectural History, Univ. of Oregon. The World Book Encyclopedia.Chicago.Scott Fetzer Company, 2000.

 

 

Fuller, Buckminster (1895-1983), was an American engineer and inventor who sought to express the technology and needs of modern life in buildings and enclosures of space. He had an intense interest in expanding people's ability to control large areas of their environment and still have a close relationship with nature. Fuller believed that solutions should be comprehensive rather than particular. His designs show the influence of such natural molecular structures as the tetrahedron. Fuller solved many design problems in such diversified fields as automobiles, buildings, and cities. His influence was spread through his lectures, teaching, and writings. A collection of essays he wrote discussing his theories and designs was published as Ideas and Integrities (1963). The title of Fuller's book Synergetics (1975) was the word he used for the cooperation of nature and design. Richard Buckminster Fuller was born in Milton, Mass. He gained international attention in 1927 by designing an all-metal prefabricated home called a Dymaxion house. After World War II (1939-1945), Fuller concentrated on designing large, lightweight prefabricated enclosures that he called geodesic domes. Contributor: Nicholas Adams, Ph.D., Prof. of Art, Vassar College.The World Book Encyclopedia.Chicago.Scott Fetzer Company, 2000.

 

Hunt, Richard Morris (1827-1895), was an American architect. He was largely responsible for shifting American architecture away from English sources and toward French influences. Hunt is perhaps best known for the magnificent summer houses that he designed late in his career for wealthy clients, especially the Vanderbilt family. Many of the mansions that Hunt designed, such as George Washington Vanderbilt's estate near Asheville, N.C., were patterned after the French Renaissance chateau. Hunt designed other mansions in New York and in Newport, R.I., notably The Breakers and Marble House. In addition, Hunt designed the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty and the front wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. See STATUE OF LIBERTY. Hunt was born in Brattleboro, Vt. He was the first American architect trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Hunt opened a studio in New York City in 1857, where he conducted workshops modeled after those of the Ecole. These workshops represented the first such education in architecture in the United States. Contributor: Leland M. Roth, Ph.D., Marion Dean Ross Prof. of Architectural History, Univ. of Oregon.The World Book Encyclopedia.Chicago.Scott Fetzer Company, 2000.

Johnson, Philip Cortelyou (1906-...), is an American architect. Johnson first gained recognition as an architectural critic. In 1932, he became the director of the architecture department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. With Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Johnson produced an exhibition catalog called The International Style (1932). The catalog defined and named the style that dominated European and American architecture in the early and mid-1900's. See ARCHITECTURE (The International Style). Johnson became an architect in the early 1940's. His first major design was the Glass House (1949) in New Canaan, Conn. Johnson based the design on the works of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a leader of the International Style. Johnson and Mies later collaborated on the design for the Seagram Building (1958) in New York City. See MIES VAN DER ROHE, LUDWIG. Johnson has been identified with the International Style. However, many of his buildings reveal a romantic quality and an emphasis on historical elements not found in typical examples of the International Style. In the 1970's, Johnson became a leader of a movement called post-modernism. Post-modern architects make free and explicit use of the arch and other traditional architectural elements. In 1978, Johnson and his partner, John Burgee, designed a controversial post-modern structure, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (now AT&T Corp.) headquarters building in New York City. The front of the building resembles a grandfather clock. He designed the six buildings in PPG Place (1983) in Pittsburgh, Pa., with elements of Gothic architecture. Johnson was born in Cleveland.The World Book Encyclopedia.Chicago.Scott Fetzer Company, 2000.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was born at Shadwell, Virginia, near Richmond, and attended the College of Williamand Mary (1760-1762). He became a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1769 and began the design and construction of his home Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia in 1768. He was member of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence and the Continental Congress where he drafted the Declaration of Independence. He later became Member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Governor of Virginia, minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice President, and President (1801-1809). He established the University of Virginia and designed its buildings (1817-1826). He also designed the Virginia State Capitol at Richmond (1785-1799) as well as various courthouses, churches, and homes around Virginia. Architectural historian Frederick D. Nichols held Jefferson to be "the greatest native born architect of his time in America." The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991.
Louis Kahn was born in Saarama, Estonia in 1901. His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1905. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a thorough grounding the the Beaux Art school of architecture. During the 1920s and 1930s he worked as a draughtsman and, later, as a head designer for several Philadelphia-based firms. In 1925-26 Kahn acted as the Chief of Design for the Sesquincettennial Exhibition. During the Depression, he was active in the design of public assisted housing. Beginning in 1935 Kahn worked with a series of partners, but from 1948 until his death in 1974, Kahn worked alone. From 1947 to 1957 he was Design Critic and Professor of Architecture at Yale University, after which he was Dean at the University of Pennsylvania. Kahn's architecture is notable for its simple, platonic forms and compositions. Through the use of brick and poured-in place concrete masonry, he developed a contemporary and monumental architecture that maintained a sympathy for the site. While rooted in the International Style, Kahn's architecture was an amalgam of his Beaux Arts education and a personal aesthetic impulse to develop his own architectural forms. Considered one of the foremost architects of the late twentieth century, Kahn received the AIA Gold Medal in 1971 and the RIBA Gold Medal in 1972. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1971. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991.
Mills, Robert (1781-1855), American architect and engineer, born in Charleston, South Carolina. He studied with the English-trained American architect Benjamin H. Latrobe and subsequently practiced as one of the first native professional American architects in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Baltimore, Maryland. In 1820 Mills became state architect and engineer of South Carolina. From 1836 until 1851 he was the official architect of public buildings for the U.S. government. An exponent of the Greek Revival style, Mills achieved simple, finely proportioned, and monumental effects in his work. One of his best-known designs is the Washington Monument, begun in 1848 but not completed until 1884. He also designed the Treasury Building (1836) and the Patent Office Building (1836), now housing the National Collection of Fine Arts and the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, D.C. The World Book Encyclopedia.Chicago.Scott Fetzer Company, 2000.

 

Richard Neutra was born in Vienna in 1892, and emigrated to the US in 1929. The architecture of Vienna left a sense of richness and elegance that was to emerge in his mature work, but in entirely new forms. In southern California Neutra developed an especially appropriate regional architecture, adding a new dimension and direction to the several regional design systems in that area. His motifs, based on simple post and beam construction, weredecidedly modern. In residential architecture, with its range of design demands, his design philosophy came into its full range. Neutra's house for Dr. P.M. Lovell, built in1928, brought him international recognition. He called it the Health House because, beyond having a differentiated outdoor play and recreation areas, the structure is brought into a close relationship with the health factors of nature. Located on a landscaped, steeply-terraced hill, it has views of the Pacific Ocean, the Santa Monica mountains, and at night the city of Los Angeles illuminated in the foreground.Recently the house was featured in the film LA Confidential. From Neutra's many outstanding residences, two present themselves boldly in his adopted California: the Desert House designed in 1946 for Edgar Kaufmann, set in the hot arid desert surrounding Palm Springs, and two years later, the Tremaine House in the sweeping, tree-shaded, rock-strewn meadowland of Montecito. Both have pinwheel plans with the living- dining area at the hub; wings of one-room depth, designed to obtain natural light with views on at least two exposures, extend outwards and open to terraces and patios that in turn merge into the rich garden landscape. They respond quite lyrically to their natural surroundings without ever compromising their architectonic integrity. Neutra believed that the architect should strive for a response to space and time that may be only fleeting, yet in its intensity becomes truly memorable. Both houses have such: a chance reflection in the pool, or glass in shadow; the roof hovering above the sunset, or the rustle of leaves. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991.
Ieoh Ming Pei was born in Canton, China in 1917. He left China when he was eighteen to study architecture at MIT and Harvard. Between 1942 and 1945, he worked as a concrete designer for Stone and Webster, and in 1946 he began work in the office of Hugh Asher Stubbins, in Boston. Pei worked as an instructor and then as an assistant professor at Harvard before he joined Webb & Knapp Inc. in New York in 1948. Pei worked as the head of the architectural division of Webb and Knapp, Inc. until 1960, when he resigned and founded his own architectural office, I. M. Pei & Partners, New York, which in 1979 became Pei, Cobb, Free & Partners. Due to his reliance on abstract form and materials such as stone, concrete, glass, and steel, Pei has been considered a disciple of Walter Gropius. However, Pei shows little concern with theory. He does not believe that architecture must find forms to express the times or that it should remain isolated from commercial forces. Pei generally designs sophisticated glass clad buildings loosely related to the high-tech movement. However, many of his designs result from original design concepts. He frequently works on a large scale and is renowned for his sharp, geometric designs. Dennis Sharp. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991.
Richardson, Henry Hobson (1838-1886), was the first American architect to achieve international fame. He introduced the Romanesque Revival style to the United States and dominated American architectural practice during the 1870's and 1880's. In his buildings, Richardson united a highly developed sense of craftsmanship with the subdued grandeur of the Romanesque style. He used stone and wood for public buildings, and wood and wood shingles for many of his houses. His work, notably the Marshall Field Wholesale Store (1887) in Chicago, profoundly influenced Louis H. Sullivan and other architects. Richardsonian Romanesque is a term used loosely to describe buildings in stone or shingle with large round-arched openings. See ARCHITECTURE (Early modern architecture in America; Romanesque architecture). Richardson was born on a plantation near New Orleans. He was educated at Harvard University and in Paris and settled in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1874. His first major work, the Trinity Church (1877) in Boston, contained the basic elements of Richardson's style. It was built of monumental cut stone with an asymmetrical plan and French Romanesque forms. Richardson designed several public libraries in the Boston area as well as buildings for the Harvard campus. His other commissions include the Glessner House (1887) in Chicago and the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail (1888) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Contributor: Nicholas Adams, Ph.D., Prof. of Art, Vassar College.
John Root spent the Civil War years in Liverpool, England study music and architecture. After the Civil War, his parents sent for him and they moved to New York. He went to New York University and graduated with a civil engineering degree in 1869. In 1872, Root moved to Chicago and secured a job as head draftsman in the firm of Carter, Drake, and Wight where he met Daniel H. Burnham. In 1873 Burnham and Root established their own company. John Root served on the planning commission for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. He was the one who recommended the area around Jackson Park as the best site for the Exposition to be held. He drew a classically influenced structure plan, the Court of Honor, to be situated around a basin that contrasted with a series of modern buildings in front of the lagoons. Root envisioned a city with many colors and shades that reflected the innovative Chicago school and expressed the vibrant architecture of the American heartland. Root's conception of a modern American exposition was never realized. He died January 15, 1891 at the age of forty-one of pneumonia. Root was a popular figure in Chicago. His standing in the artistic community grew when he married the sister of Poetry magazine founder, Harriet Monroe who was also a biographer. She wrote a well-received study of her brother-in-law in 1896.The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991.
Louis Sullivan was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1856. He studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for one year. He then worked as a draughtsman for Furness and Hewitt in Philadelphia and for William Le Baron Jenney in Chicago. In July 1874 Sullivan travelled to Europe where he studied in the Vaudremer studio at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He returned to Chicago a year later. In 1883 Sullivan became a full partner with Dankmar Adler. They remained together until 1895 when Adler retired. Although Sullivan was usually viewed as the designer being backed by Adler's engineering skills, Adler's work showed an individual strength that has often been ignored. Sullivan's designs generally involved a simple geometric form decorated with ornamentation based on organic symbolism. As an organizer and formal theorist on aesthetics, he propounded an architecture that exhibited the spirit of the time and needs of the people. Considered one of the most influential forces in the Chicago School, his philosophy that form should always follow function went beyond functional and structural expressions. Considered the "Dean of American Architects", Sullivan died in Chicago, Illinois 1924 shortly after The Autobiography of an Idea and A System of Architectural Ornament. were published. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991.
Eero Saarinen was the son of the celebrated Finnish architect and first President of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Eliel Saarinen. Born in Helsinki, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1923. Initially studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére in Paris (1929/30) and later architecture at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, graduating in 1934. He received a scholarship there which enabled him to travel to Europe (1934/35). On his return, he taught at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. In 1937, he began a collaboration with Charles Eames which culminated in a series of highly progressive and prize-winning furniture designs for The Museum of Modern Art´s 1940 "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition. He later produced several highly successful furniture designs for Knoll International. He worked in his father´s architectural office until Eliel´s death in 1950. His greatest architectural project was the remarkable TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport, New York.The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991.
Saarinen, (Gottlieb) Eliel (1873-1950), Finnish-American architect, who strongly influenced modern architecture. Saarinen was born in Rantasalmi and trained in Helsinki. His rejection of 19th-century eclecticism is apparent even in early works such as the Finnish Pavilion (Paris Exhibition, 1900), with its simple, forthright lines, and the pine-and-granite studio-house at Hvitträsk (1902), with its sensitive use of the building materials. In his boldly innovative Helsinki Central Railroad Station (1904-1914), a clean-lined vertical tower is surrounded by lower, clearly proportioned horizontal masses. Winning second prize in the 1922 Chicago Tribune Building competition (his design greatly influenced later structures of U.S. skyscrapers), he moved to the U.S. in 1923. There he was closely associated with the Cranbrook group of schools in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (near Detroit), designing most of the buildings and directing the Cranbrook Academy of Art (president, 1932-1948), which he developed into a school famous for its integration of all aspects of design.The World Book Encyclopedia.Chicago.Scott Fetzer Company, 2000.
Venturi, Robert (Charles) (1925- ), American architect and teacher, one of the most influential architectural theorists of the late 20th century. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the 1960s Venturi initiated a critique of orthodox modern architecture; this led to the development of postmodernism in the 1970s. He encouraged the return of historicism, applied decoration, and overt symbolism in architectural design. Venturi's early works were simple in image, complex in plan, and rich in historical allusion-a contrast to the functional architecture of the time. In 1967 Venturi married American urban planner and architect Denise Scott Brown. The two coauthored, with architect Steven Izenour, the landmark book Learning From Las Vegas (1972). In this work the authors proclaimed the significance of popular culture, commercial vernacular design, and the architecture of the roadside strip as sources for serious architecture. The firm of Venturi, Rauch, and Scott Brown (later Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates) designed several of the most influential buildings of the 1970s and 1980s, including Franklin Court in Independence National Historical Park, in Philadelphia (1972-1976). The World Book Encyclopedia.Chicago.Scott Fetzer Company, 2000.
Thomas Ustick Walter (1804-1887) was instrumental in the development of American recognition of architecture as a profession and was responsible for the design of several federal buildings in the District of Columbia, the most famous being the dome and House and Senate extensions of the U.S. Capitol. Walter apprenticed as a youth with his father, a master bricklayer, then studied architecture in the office of William Strickland, and at the School of Mechanical Arts under John Haviland. He began his professional practice in 1831, but now a master bricklayer himself, he continued to work for his father as a hedge against uncertain employment. His career as an architect became assured when Walter won the competition for Philadelphia's Girard College For Orphans (1833-1848). His design, a monument of the American Greek Revival, brought national recognition. Always interested in increasing respect for the profession of architecture, Walter proposed the formation of the American Institution of Architects (1836), after the creation, two years earlier, of a similar professional association in Great Britain. This was the first professional association for architects in America. This organization was succeeded by the American Institute of Architects, for which Walter served as second president (1876-1887). After several years of rising, then declining prosperity, his fortunes were re-established with several important commissions culminating in his appointment by President Millard Fillmore (1850) as the designer and architect of the new legislative extensions to the U.S. Capitol. Walter's replacement of the wooden dome with a cast iron design took place over ten years (1855-1865) through clashes with Montgomery C. Meigs (appointed as engineer in 1853) and delays due to the Civil War. Walter resigned his post in 1865 expecting to be recalled to take the post of Architect of the Capitol, but when this did not occur, his fortunes declined again, and he died in poverty in 1887. The World Book Encyclopedia.Chicago.Scott Fetzer Company, 2000.

 

 

1853-1906, American architect, b. New York City; son of Richard Grant White. In 1872 he entered the office of Gambrill and Richardson in Boston, at the time when H. H. Richardson was at the peak of his fame. There White worked upon the design for Trinity Church, Boston. After studying in Europe, he entered (1879) into partnership with C. F. McKim and W. R. Mead, a firm that was to affect the course of American architecture over a long period. White had a passionate love of beauty; his special talents were for the decorative elements of a building and for its interior design and furnishing. He also possessed a wide knowledge of antiques. Among the buildings executed by the firm, those that are commonly ascribed as his individual accomplishments include the second Madison Square Garden, Madison Square Presbyterian Church, the New York Herald Building, Washington Arch, and the Century Club, all in New York City; only the last two still stand. These buildings illustrated his characteristic concentration upon rich and graceful effects and especially upon beautifully sculptured Renaissance ornament. White was shot and killed in Madison Square Roof Garden by Harry K. Thaw because of his love affair with Thaw's wife, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw. After his death the firm continued to design buildings in his style that later were erroneously attributed to White himself, e.g., the Harvard Club, New York City. The World Book Encyclopedia.Chicago.Scott Fetzer Company, 2000.

 

 

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin in 1867. He and his family settled in Madison, Wisconsin in 1877. He was educated at Second Ward School, Madison from 1879 to 1883. After a brief sting at the University of Wisconsin where he took some mechanical drawing and basic mathematics courses, Wright departed for Chicago where he spent several months in J. L. Silsbee's office before seeking employment with Adler and Sullivan. Wright evolved a new concept of interior space in architecture. Rejecting the existing view of rooms as single-function boxes, Wright created overlapping and interpenetrating rooms with shared spaces. He designated use areas with screening devices and subtle changes in ceiling heights and created the idea of defined space as opposed to enclosed space. Through experimentation, Wright developed the idea of the prairie house - a long, low building with hovering planes and horizontal emphasis. He developed these houses around the basic crucifix, L or T shape and utilized a basic unit system of organization. He integrated simple materials such as brick, wood, and plaster into the designs. In 1914 Wright lost his wife and several members of his household when a servant burned down Taliesin, his home and studio in Wisconsin. Following the tragedy, he re-directed his architecture toward more solid, protective forms. Although he produced few works during the 1920s, Wright theoretically began moving in a new direction that would lead to some of his greatest works. Walter Burley Griffin was among the many notable architects to emerge from the Wright studios. In 1932 Wright established the Taliesin Fellowship - a group of apprentices who did construction work, domestic chores, and design studies. Four years later, he designed and built both Fallingwater and the Johnson Administration Building. These designs re-invigorated Wright's career and led to a steady flow of commissions, particularly for lower middle income housing. Wright responded to the need for low income housing with the Usonian house, a development from his earlier prairie house. During the last part of his life, Wright produced a wide range of work. Particularly important was Taliesin West, a winter retreat and studio he built in Phoenix, Arizona. He died at Taliesin West in 1959. The World Book Encyclopedia.Chicago.Scott Fetzer Company, 2000.

 

[Home] [Architects] [Styles] [Timeline] [Take Quiz] [Links] [Contact Us]