Paul Rudolph: Inspiration & Process in Architecture

146 Pages·129.081 MB·English

by  Eugenia Bell

PAUL
RUDOLPH
Inspiration and Process in Architecture
Introduction by
John Morris Dixon
Edited by
Eugenia Bell
Moleskine Books
Princeton Architectural Press
Published by
Princeton Architectural Press
202 Warren Street
Hudson, NY 12534
www.papress.com
© 2020 Princeton Architectural Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-61689-865-6
ISBN 978-1-61689-888-5 (epub, mobi)
All images courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Introduction © 2019 John Morris Dixon
Interview with Paul Rudolph, by Robert Bruegmann, compiled under the auspices
of the Chicago Architects Oral History Project, the Ernest R. Graham Study Center
for Architectural Drawings, Department of Architecture, the Art Institute of Chicago.
© 1993–2000 The Art Institute of Chicago, used with permission.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without
written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright.
Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.
Editor: Eugenia Bell
Layout and typesetting: Kristen Ren, Paul Wagner
Series design: A+G AchilliGhizzardiAssociati
Special thanks to: Paula Baver, Janet Behning, Abby Bussel, Jan Cigliano Hartman,
Susan Hershberg, Kristen Hewitt, Stephanie Holstein, Lia Hunt, Valerie Kamen,
Jennifer Lippert, Sara McKay, Parker Menzimer, Wes Seeley, Rob Shaeffer,
Sara Stemen, Jessica Tackett, Marisa Tesoro, Paul Wagner, and Joseph Weston
of Princeton Architectural Press
—Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available from the publisher upon request.
Inspiration and Process is a series of monographs on key figures in modern and
contemporary design that emphasizes the value of freehand drawing as part of the
creative process. Each volume reveals secrets and insights, and conveys observation
techniques, languages, characters, forms, and means of communication.
Contents
5 Writings
6 Introduction
24 Interview with Paul Rudolph
37 Drawings
38 Tuskegee Chapel
42 Interama project
50 ENDO Laboratories
56 Lower Manhattan Expressway
82 New Haven Government Center
88 Parking Garage, Manager’s Office
94 New Haven
100 Analysis of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion
102 23 Beekman Place
124 Modulightor Inc.
128 Wisma Dharmala
132 The Concourse
136 David Eu Residence
141 Biography
New Haven Government Center
New Haven, Connecticut, 1968
study sketch, recto
Writings
Introduction
John Morris Dixon
Paul Rudolph played a major but debatable role in the
course of modern architecture: initially loyal to the main
line of Modernism, soon becoming a maverick, then
something of an outcast. His design career launched
auspiciously in the early 1950s, when he was in his thir-
ties, with some widely admired modest-scaled works in
Florida. He began gaining larger, more geographically dis-
persed commissions, and by 1958 he had moved his prac-
tice to New York and become chairman of the Department
of Architecture at Yale, at the age of forty. He headed the
design program there for seven years and designed the
iconic Art and Architecture building to house it. For a few
years he continued to complete other large-scale works,
but by the 1980s his style had fallen sharply out of favor in
the United States, and he spent his final decades design-
ing large-scale office and apartment structures in Asia,
which got scant attention back home.
Rudolph was one of the second generation of Ameri-
can Modernists, including I. M. Pei, Philip Johnson, John
Johansen, and Edward Larrabee Barnes, who studied
concurrently under Walter Gropius and other modern
movement pioneers at Harvard. Rudolph’s early works
brilliantly demonstrated the movement’s ideals of spa-
tial and structural clarity, but he soon became impatient
with its stark functionality and its expression primar-
ily of structural systems. He then began to pursue a
more sculpturally and spatially complex architecture.
He achieved that objective perhaps too successfully and
came to be seen by colleagues, critics, and the interested
public as indulging in complexity for its own sake.
Rudolph’s exceptional drawing skills date to the start Cocoon House
(Healy guest house),
of his design education, in the 1930s, at the Alabama
Siesta Key, Florida, 1950
Polytechnic Institute (which later became Auburn presentation drawing
6
Introduction
John Morris Dixon
Paul Rudolph played a major but debatable role in the
course of modern architecture: initially loyal to the main
line of Modernism, soon becoming a maverick, then
something of an outcast. His design career launched
auspiciously in the early 1950s, when he was in his thir-
ties, with some widely admired modest-scaled works in
Florida. He began gaining larger, more geographically dis-
persed commissions, and by 1958 he had moved his prac-
tice to New York and become chairman of the Department
of Architecture at Yale, at the age of forty. He headed the
design program there for seven years and designed the
iconic Art and Architecture building to house it. For a few
years he continued to complete other large-scale works,
but by the 1980s his style had fallen sharply out of favor in
the United States, and he spent his final decades design-
ing large-scale office and apartment structures in Asia,
which got scant attention back home.
Rudolph was one of the second generation of Ameri-
can Modernists, including I. M. Pei, Philip Johnson, John
Johansen, and Edward Larrabee Barnes, who studied
concurrently under Walter Gropius and other modern
movement pioneers at Harvard. Rudolph’s early works
brilliantly demonstrated the movement’s ideals of spa-
tial and structural clarity, but he soon became impatient
with its stark functionality and its expression primar-
ily of structural systems. He then began to pursue a
more sculpturally and spatially complex architecture.
He achieved that objective perhaps too successfully and
came to be seen by colleagues, critics, and the interested
public as indulging in complexity for its own sake.
Rudolph’s exceptional drawing skills date to the start Cocoon House
(Healy guest house),
of his design education, in the 1930s, at the Alabama
Siesta Key, Florida, 1950
Polytechnic Institute (which later became Auburn presentation drawing
7
University). There, the eclectic approach associated with
the École des Beaux-Arts still reigned, and the seduc-
tive qualities of fine drawing—with subtle coloring and
careful rendering of shadows—were encouraged. Having
excelled there, he moved on to pursue an advanced
degree at Harvard, where the Bauhaus discipline favored
hard black lines on white, depicting the geometries of
sleek structures without distracting subtleties.
Rudolph’s brilliant drawings combine the best of both
approaches. In the sketches he did to explore and refine
design concepts, he used black and colored pencil in
a free style to produce images that are works of art in
themselves, however essentially purposeful. His pres-
entation drawings created to convince clients—press and
public as well—are typically meticulously detailed images
executed in fine black line on white, carefully depicting
textures. These were often done in traditional perspec-
tive but sometimes in the aerial axonometric projections
introduced by the Modernists. Occasionally, however,
subtle coloration in shadow patterns and landscaping
would make his presentation drawings more pictorial.
At the outset of Rudolph’s roller-coaster career, his 1950s
Florida buildings (executed as part of the partnership
Twitchell & Rudolph) expanded on the promise of the
Bauhaus ethos. The 1950 Cocoon House, a mere guest
house of simple form (which was scrupulously restored
in 2018), exhibited notable structural innovation. Rudolph
had spent the wartime years in the Naval Reserve, work-
ing on ship construction and repair at the Brooklyn Navy
Yard, where he was exposed to innovative materials and
techniques. There he had learned the potentials of, for
instance, bendable steel sheet and spray-on plastics,
materials especially useful where minimal dimensions
and weight are critical. His application of these materi-
als in Cocoon House were among their first uses ever in
building construction.
8