Paul Rudolph: Inspiration & Process in Architecture 9781616898656, 9781616898885

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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 6 24

Writings Introduction Interview with Paul Rudolph

37 38 42 50 56 82 88 94 100 102 124 128 132 136

Drawings Tuskegee Chapel Interama project ENDO Laboratories Lower Manhattan Expressway New Haven Government Center Parking Garage, Manager’s Office New Haven Analysis of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion 23 Beekman Place Modulightor Inc. Wisma Dharmala The Concourse 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 thirties, with some widely admired modest-scaled works in Florida. He began gaining larger, more geographically dispersed commissions, and by 1958 he had moved his practice 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 designing large-scale office and apartment structures in Asia, which got scant attention back home. Rudolph was one of the second generation of American 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 spatial and structural clarity, but he soon became impatient with its stark functionality and its expression primarily 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 of his design education, in the 1930s, at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (which later became Auburn 6

Cocoon House (Healy guest house), Siesta Key, Florida, 1950 presentation drawing 7

University). There, the eclectic approach associated with the École des Beaux-Arts still reigned, and the seductive 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 presentation 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 perspective 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, working 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 materials in Cocoon House were among their first uses ever in building construction.

8

Rudolph’s other Florida buildings were notably responsive to the intense sunlight there. These include Umbrella House (1953), where a separate canopy above the roof shades the building and related outdoor spaces. His addition to Sarasota High School (1959) was notable for the artfully designed concrete canopies over its outdoor spaces and the concrete light baffles shielding its windows. His oceanfront Milam House had deep rectangular recesses baffling the sun’s rays both vertically and horizontally. From the outset of his career, Rudolph spoke and wrote about design, more than most of his contemporaries. In 1954, at the age of thirty-five, he addressed a standingroom-only audience at the national American Institute of Architects convention¹. Among his observations were that “Modern architecture’s range of expression today is from A to B.” He asserted that “We build isolated buildings with no regard to the spaces between them,” and that there was too much obsessing about structure, which is only “a means to an end.” “Visual delight,” he said, was “the architect’s primary responsibility.” In a 1956 issue of Architectural Record he reproached Modernism for failing to deal with the “relationship of one building to another” and praised its presumably vanquished archenemy, the Beaux-Arts tradition, as “very rich in this aspect” of design.²

1

Paul Heyer, Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1978; 1993), pp. 295–307. 2A  rchitectural Record, October 1956, pp. 183–90.

In 1958, the year he turned forty and became chairman at Yale, he completed his first large institutional commission, the Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Jewett was an interesting step in Rudolph’s evolving design approach. One unquestionably positive contextual move he made at Wellesley was to organize the building’s volumes so that they added a new quadrangle to the campus plan. In its details, the building was a very unusual hybrid for its time. It displays modern features such as generous cantilevers and gridded metal sunscreens suspended over large areas of glass. 9

Mary Cooper Jewett Arts Center Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, perspective rendering, 1956

Yet Rudolph went further to harmonize with the campus’ prevailing Collegiate Gothic architecture by composing these screens in tall vertical panels aligned with prominent structural columns. He then spiked the building’s roofline with sharply angular skylights, metal-and-glass abstractions of typical Gothic pinnacles. In that Record essay, he had specifically challenged the predominantly flat roofs of modern buildings, saying, “One doubts that a poem was ever written to a flat-roofed building silhouetted against the setting sun.” 10

While I for one admired the Jewett for its sensitive response to context—and still do—the Modernist establishment had decidedly mixed feelings about his direction. In 1961, Progressive Architecture published a remarkably harsh article by the Canadian architectural historian Peter Collins entitled “Whither Paul Rudolph” (or was that “wither”?). He started on an envy-laden note by writing that since Frank Lloyd Wright was gone, Rudolph was “the popular press’ ideal choice for the role of American FormGiver of the Space Age,” observing that the architect’s 11

“Ivy League haircut and boyish smile” suited that position. “Yet,” said Collins, “his air of conformity is deceptive, for he is a bohemian and a revolutionary at heart.” Going on, Collins wrote that “he continues to astound the bourgeoisie with the novelty of ever more enterprising architectural shapes.” Finally, Collins shed light on his own motivations by writing that the “unpredictable variety” of Rudolph’s designs challenged architectural historians because “they lack that one quality on which the latter’s bread and butter depends—classifiability.” While Rudolph was definitely angry about this tirade, he more or less simultaneously obtained the commission that was the undoubted pinnacle of his career, the Yale Art and Architecture building. Even as it was still under construction its historical stature was understood. When it was completed, all three U.S. architecture magazines of the time published February 1964 cover feature articles about it—a concurrence that happened, on average, about once per decade. “A&A” was—and is—worth celebrating for the way it occupied its place in the city and related to neighboring buildings—diverse as they are. It boldly occupied a key location in the street grid, where the prevailing orientation shifts a bit, attracting and rewarding attention from blocks away. Its sculptural form, nine stories in height, stood out among its neighbors, but didn’t overwhelm them. Its configuration of windowless shafts, glass-clad planes, and deep recesses played with the dominant geometry of its setting and provided the interesting silhouette Rudolph found so lacking in most Modernism. The dominant verticality of its ribbed, bush-hammered concrete surfaces, in shades of gray with textural variations, established an obvious kinship with the Gothic design prevalent at Yale, if not among immediately neighboring structures. The building’s spatially complex interior was notable—in some circles notorious—for including thirty-six different 12

floor levels. Student drafting areas were located on mezzanines overlooking multistory central volumes. The eminent architect Joseph Esherick reportedly remarked that “you couldn’t go to the men’s room without having a spatial experience.” ³ And a large proportion of the surfaces in this three-dimensional spatial maze duplicated the rough ribbed concrete surfaces of the exterior. Users of the building were cautious about wearing easily damaged clothes. He did, as in some other projects, counter the severity of the concrete with vivid color for carpets and seating, in this case a vibrant orange. Since its opening in early 1964, A&A has had a complicated history. Rudolph’s successors as department chair and the students of the rebellious 1960s did not respect it, splotching many of its concrete surfaces with graffiti. Much of its interior was obstructed by flimsy partitions, erected officially and unofficially. In 1969, a fire that may or may not have been accidental ruined a large portion of the interior. In the late 1990s, Yale carried out a substantial addition and renovations that restored—in some cases improved—the building, which is now named Rudolph Hall. During his Yale heyday, Rudolph undertook a number of substantial and notably diverse projects. For Yale he also designed the Greeley Forestry Laboratory, more modest in scale than A&A, but distinctive for its concrete structural columns configured like elaborations of the letter Y, and for its innovative system of skylights. A complex of married student housing of 1960 is composed of more or less cubic, brick-walled units picturesquely organized on a steeply sloping site. Both survive in good condition.

3 Interview 

with Michael J. Crosbie, Architecture, November 1988, pp. 102–7.

Boldly visible in downtown New Haven is Rudolph’s fivestory, two-block-long public parking garage (1962), with a structural system of gracefully curved board-formed concrete that gives this no-nonsense facility exceptional visual appeal. On the outskirts of New Haven, a 13

Rudolph-designed 148-unit complex of prefabricated housing was erected in 1971 as part of the federally sponsored Operation Breakthrough program, but units performed poorly and the intricate site layout apparently fostered crime, and it was demolished in 1981. Opportunities arose in Boston, as well. In 1962 Rudolph was commissioned to design the Boston Government Services Center, as part of the extensive Government Center complex inserted into the heart of the city. The portion he designed consisted of two medium-rise volumes stretching along the streets, surrounding a central plaza, from which a sculptural office tower was to rise—all of the exteriors to be of exposed concrete. Only about half of the ambitious undertaking was completed before construction stopped—without the tower—in the 1970s. Elsewhere in downtown Boston was Rudolph’s Blue Cross Blue Shield office building, relatively unassertive but distinguished by the way its street-level concrete columns transition into concrete-framed curtain walls above. There were other 1960s commissions that demonstrated Rudolph’s exceptional talents. The mid-1960s Southeastern Massachusetts Technical Institute allowed him to shape an entire environment with characteristic concrete-framed structures surrounding a carefully contoured quadrangle. Little known, perhaps because of its rural location, the campus remains in close to pristine condition today as the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Another notable mid-1960s work was the ENDO Pharmaceutical Laboratory in Garden City, Long Island (pp. 50–55). There, production facilities occupy a large rectangular podium, with offices, research spaces, and a glass-walled cafeteria arranged around a roof garden above—most of it sculpted of ribbed concrete Tuskegee Chapel (pp. 38–41), at the center of the historically black Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Rudolph’s native Alabama, was completed in 1969 in 14

collaboration with the African American-led firm Fry & Welch. It is a stellar example of Rudolph’s ability to shape interior space. There are no apparent right angles in the plan, which funnels attention onto the top-lighted chancel area. There are visible concrete structural members supporting the roof, but walls are of the campus’s local brick both inside and out. This was another example of striking color in Rudolph interiors, ranging here from a soft rose for carpet and pews and pale blue-violet for suspended acoustic panels to more vivid reds at the liturgical focus. In the 1970s, there were other buildings, attracting limited attention among architects and the public. The Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York (1971), was a low-rise composition of concrete-walled volumes notable, like A&A, for its many interior floor levels. It was the subject of an intensive preservation effort yet was demolished beginning in 2015. Another campus chapel, this one for the theology school at Emory University in Atlanta, was completed in 1975. Used in part as a teaching facility, it has elegantly smooth concrete walls and concrete vaults clad in red ceramic roof tiles— these materials effectively matching the marble cladding and tile roofing of revered adjoining buildings. From 1983 to 1987, Rudolph developed a highly complex, multi-level apartment for himself, topping an existing Manhattan townhouse. In 1989, he completed the nearby Modulightor building (pp. 124–27) a renovated townhouse with ground-floor retail and a dramatic facade of steel-framed rectangles, now headquarters of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation. Rudolph’s interest in relating buildings to context occasionally extended into idealistic urban design proposals that were (like comparable proposals by his contemporaries) never executed. The most ambitious and best known of his urban schemes was his design for mixed-use 15

Lower Manhattan Expressway New York City map showing proposed development

development above the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway (pp. 56–81). During the 1950s period of interstate highway construction, this was considered an essential link between the Holland Tunnel and two East River bridges, but in the 1960s attitudes shifted sharply in favor of neighborhood preservation. In 1967, the Ford Foundation commissioned Rudolph to study potential new development along the route. In his proposal several 16

levels above the highway would be devoted to local traffic, parking, and pedestrian circulation, flanked by bands of new construction supported on triangulated framing, the heights and uses of which would vary with the neighborhoods it passed through. The scheme was variously greeted as visionary or nightmarish, but opinions became moot in 1969, when the city effectively vetoed the expressway itself. 17

18

Colonnade Condominium Grange and Orchard roads Singapore, site plan 19

The Concourse Singapore, 1981 atrium, aerial perspective

20

When U.S. commissions for Rudolph dwindled in the 1980s, he was one of the first Americans to benefit from increasing development in Asia. Rapidly growing economies and urbanization, along with a motivation to catch up with the architectural vanguard increased demand for the large-scale innovative design that he was well qualified to meet. The Concourse in Singapore (pp. 132-35), built in two phases (1982 and 1993) is exemplary of his Asian work. Its 700,000 square feet of interior space includes a five-story base integrated with the urban context, with retail and public concourses linked by ramps and escalators, topped by a forty-one-story tower housing not just offices, but gardened terraces and three-story-high “socializing spaces.” The distant influence of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower can be seen in the complex’s interlocking geometries and mix of functions. Rudolph’s other Southeast Asian works include the strikingly sculpted Colonnade Condominiums tower in Singapore (1980); the Dharmala Headquarters in Jakarta (1982; pp. 128–31), with boldly angular sunshades around its all-white angular exterior; and the Bond Center in Hong Kong (1984), where two intricately angular glass-sheathed office towers rise on hefty stilt-like columns above a fourstory mixed-use base. He continued to design large-scale office and residential projects for Asian cities with commercial and recreational facilities at their bases. One of these was to have in open-air core overlooked by inward-facing terraces. At a smaller scale, he proposed a structure, the Wee Ee Chao condominiums, said to be one of his favorite designs, which stacked three residential duplexes for a dramatic site on Hong Kong’s Peak.4

4 Roberto 

de Alba, Paul Rudolph: The Late Work (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003).

Throughout his career, Rudolph considered himself not only a designer, but a teacher, a learner, a historian, and a critic. His extensive and discerning world travels are documented mainly with photographs, but there is one instance where he recorded his study of a landmark structure in drawings. That is his set of analytic sketches 21

of Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion for the Barcelona World’s Fair of 1929—popularly known as the Barcelona Pavilion—which was rebuilt on the original site in 1992. There he was greatly impressed with Mies’ configuration of rectangular vertical planes, standing separately within a clear glass enclosure. He seems to have had something of a revelation about Mies’ use of reflections among these surfaces of glass and marble—all reflecting each other, objects in the space, and pools outside. Rudolph’s five sketch plans (pp. 100-101) of the pavilion are not easy to interpret, but appear to show: 1) visitor circulation, with points where one is most likely to pause and views from each of those points; 2) visitor’s path, with angles of reflection from vertical marble and glass planes; 3) what Rudolph calls “invisible” or “implied” planes radiating from the ends of vertical planes; 4) same “invisible” planes with their effect on movement through space; 5) effect of light reflection from marble planes, most dark green, one in shades of red. Unfortunately, Rudolph’s Naval Reserve shipbuilding experience during World War II, which taught him valuable lessons on construction methods, had a negative effect late in his life. He had been exposed then to extensive sprayed asbestos insulation—not recognized as a health hazard at the time but revealed decades later to cause a serious lung ailment. That service-caused illness brought Rudolph’s life to an end in 1997, somewhat short of his eightieth year. What Paul Rudolph has left behind for us goes well beyond the physical presence of his buildings, inspiring as they are. He has left a trove of drawings that document the designs of actual buildings, the possibilities he explored in the design process, and even his analysis of architecture by others. We can learn from them about what goes on in the mind of the designer or just savor them as artifacts produced by his eyes and hand. 22

Wee Ee Chao condominiums Hong Kong, 1994 project sketch 23

Interview with Paul Rudolph Robert Bruegmann

This is an edited excerpt from a longer interview conducted by Robert Bruegmann in 1986 for the Chicago Architects Oral History Project, organized by the Department of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago. I’m at the office of Paul Rudolph. We’re going to talk about some recent Southeast Asian work for a show at The Art Institute of Chicago. If we could start with the Southeast Asia work, I’d like to review with you for a moment the buildings that, as I understand it, we’ll be putting into the show. This will include drawings of two Singapore buildings—the Beach Road complex and the Grange Road complex. Could you just say a few words about how you first got involved in the Southeast Asian work? In 1979 I received a call from a citizen of Singapore who wanted to talk with me about entering a competition. […] I made proposals for a hotel in Singapore. It was very peculiar because this competition sponsored by the government of Singapore was in fact given to [John] Portman, but they wanted to build my design for the hotel. Subsequently it was decided not to do this, but we were given another project, which is known as Beach Road I. The design of Beach Road I is determined, as always, by many factors. First of all, the environment: the main entrance to the building receives the thrust of a street which is at right angles to the building. The building has a magnificent site: it faces the Pacific and it’s on the edge of the central business area. It is a product of the relationship of two adjacent towers and relatively low buildings—two- and three-story high buildings—on the opposite side of street. It seemed very natural to have a tower. Indeed, Singapore is a city of towers because the land area of Singapore is very small and the zoning almost forces you into a tower. By the same token, the commercial area doesn’t work very well in a tower and so I put that in a (six-story-high) building. The essential thing, from my viewpoint anyway, is that the building makes the differentiation between the 24

three parts. Unlike Mies, I don’t believe that it is sufficient that living units be handled architecturally in the same way as offices. It seems to me that the activities are so different that that needs to be celebrated. Is this concrete structure throughout? It is a concrete structure. That’s another law in Singapore that states that you cannot expose concrete. It’s all to be sheathed with a while tile, very small. And the reason for that? The humidity in Singapore is very great. It’s a tropical climate, and it’s no news that the mildew and fungus in concrete is a very real problem. An aesthetic problem? Is mildew a structural problem? It’s an aesthetic problem, it’s not a structural one. You have, in many of these projects, enclosed atrium spaces. You also have, I think in all of them, outdoor spaces. Is it your feeling that you need the variety? Yes. It has to do with climate, of course, but it also has to do with what people do in Singapore. Singapore is a great tourist place, partially because of the climate, and the life outside is very elaborate. There are lots of people around because of the climate. To give the outdoor room significance people need to belong or feel that they are at a place. That’s part of it. The inside space is another matter. Shopping in Singapore, partially because of tourism, is a major part of their economy and there's great competition for shopping. There are almost no cultural institutions in Singapore. Those that exist are somehow relatively inaccessible to the foreigner.

25

[T]he office space in Beach Road I is rather straightforward. There are no outdoor spaces or a multi-story atrium. No. You have done this very interesting thing in section with these apartments that you can clearly see from the drawings. Yes. They are double height spaces. By our standards, they are small apartments, but spatially they are rather developed—it’s not nearly as much as in the Grange Road project, but they’re developed. Before leaving I would like to say one small thing about this spatially. There is an atrium here and in plan the atrium is an octagon, an elongated octagon, not a regular one. In section each floor steps back in varying increments so that the space is molded very elaborately. The elevators are kind of staking down this big mix. From that elevator comes a series of—you can just begin to see them, and I've always wanted to make a nice drawing of them and never have— Chinese fans that you see. That's my effort to give a focal point. The movement of space, while fascinating for me, is also a very dangerous thing because if it isn't brought into equilibrium then it can really be upsetting. I know that from some very personal experiences. The interior space of this is a juxtaposition of a fan with a stake, which are the elevators, and a big mix-master of flowing space—molded space, if you will—it’s anything but static. Do the floors project outward as they go up? They step back at varying increments. On one side they’re almost vertical. They’re only about two meters, if I recall correctly; it’s a very precise space. On another side they step back about four meters. On the other side they step back about eight meters. When it comes around to the thrust of the elevators it’s literally vertical.

26

This kind of atrium of course, as you know, has been very popular in many American spaces. How did you come by it? It has so much to do with the life of the people there, as I tried to explain. The big room really is important. Also this darn shopping. There is something about the Oriental notion of displaying wares that comes from their tradition. It’s all very low scale with low ceilings. You really long to have an escape, I think. In this case it’s also an entertainment place. You see I had proposed a stage that is an elevator that would go up and down. There is a certain tradition there that people go to these places at lunchtime and in the evening too, but especially at lunch. There is often entertainment and, of course, it has to do with the commercial aspect of drawing people to it. It has to do with the fact that they have few cultural institutions in Singapore. Which of these big atria space had you seen here and liked? Do you recollect one or another of them? I still think that the Brown Hotel in Denver is simultaneously intimate and grand, an aspect that appeals to me very greatly. The best of the John Portman atriums, for me, is his first one in Atlanta. There he at least put the elevator core off center. When he puts it in the middle of course, as Wright said, it’s like a merry-go-round with the spaces going around it. That first Portman atrium must have created quite an impact. It did. Just in scale it must have been overwhelming. [ … ] It was a very important building, I think, and in a sense very much underrated. Also it had its multi-function: you have for the first time almost in the United States an enclosed village square. I appreciate that very much.

27

This notion of the multi-level space in a dwelling is something which you’ve obviously been dealing with since the very earliest houses, and this is, you said, one of your prejudices or obsessions. Do you have any idea why you feel that? Why, in contrast to most people who still prefer to live on one level, are you always driving to try to design multi-level units? It seems to me to be innate in human behavior or human instinct. It’s the difference between Wright’s handling of space, which is based on the needs of the human being psychologically, as opposed to Mies who didn't use space psychologically at all, and indeed the international stylists. Later on, Le Corbusier started to handle the space psychologically to satisfy psychological needs. Wright, instinctively from the very beginning—and it seems to me that's the most unique thing about his architecture is his spatial aspects—is absolutely wedded to the needs of the human being from an emotional point of view. That’s the other reason why finally his work is much greater than any of the others. He understood that so well. Mies didn’t have a clue. The whole idea of the continuum of space, which I guess is shown best in the Barcelona Pavilion or the Farnsworth House in Illinois, is a marvelous thing. I don’t mean to say it isn’t, it’s just that it touches the tip of an iceberg. That's the reason why Wright is so much a greater architect than Mies. There was this interest in space for Corbusier, but it seems that he always had very few prototypes in mind and that the artist's studio with the balcony overhanging the two-story living space seemed to be one of the types that reappeared throughout his career. That also seems to be something that influences you very strongly. For the whole of the international stylist you can say, it was always the two-story high to the one-story high thing. That has a little bit to do with the multi-storied notion and the frame as a regular element. It’s not so easy to get around that. Wright managed, of course, but Wright didn’t build that many multi-story buildings either. The easy way to do it is the two-to-one ratio, but that seldom 28

works very well, in fact. It’s a kind of equality that is unfortunate. Incidentally, Corbu’s other spatial notion, in my view anyway, was the spatial element within the larger spatial element. The core, for instance. His use of that was maybe not always so fortunate. Although, at some point it became no longer a core but rather it became a whole volume of space as in his government building in Chandigarh—the General Assembly Building— where the space wraps around that. There are all sorts of bumps and grinds, appurtenances, that come out into the major space, but then the central space, of course, is the assembly. Also, Corbu’s other spatial thing has to do with the Stein House outside Paris and also his truly great house in India. Therein the space is continuous, bending, turning, sweeping—moving horizontally as well as vertically—through the whole. Essentially, while the space flows it is always defined by at least two vertical planes. He was a great one to define space by implying a division of space by defining it horizontally as well as vertically, but it was transparent. I'm not describing this very well—let me start over. More important for Corbu’s sense of space later on than the two-to-one ratio was the continuum of space for the whole building. This is most clearly shown, I believe, in his house for India wherein a block of space was defined and then he cut into it and out of it and through it and pierced it and so forth so that it became continuous. It was very different from Mies’ notion of space, which was, of course, always a regular series of columns in a series of horizontal planes. We call them floors and roofs. That was a subdivided—but never vertically—horizontal flowing of space. Are you describing Corbusier’s ideal design as a single block where the free elements are always juxtaposed implicitly to the regularity of the thing? There’s a geometric purity within his putting in counter-distinctions to the irregular or curving elements. It isn’t so in the Villa Savoye; you think it’s so, but it isn’t, partially because of the ramp. As a matter of fact, that's 29

an important point too. I think he would have developed his notion of the vehicle of flowing space more had he lived longer. That was very profound, for me anyway. It was much more developed than Mies. With Frank Lloyd Wright it comes out as something entirely different. You never have the sense that it's a single unified space that’s subdivided. If anything, it is spaces that are either pushed or pulled or added or subtracted. Yes, of course. He didn’t give a tinker’s damn about the structure. I’m sure he gave lip service to it, but he would bend it any old way. It also has to do with Wright’s idea of siting. I think he was a master at it, which Corbu was never very good at. Wright’s siting and wedding things in a relationship, literally, to the ground was masterful. The block of space was an anathema to him. He was probably against the Parthenon, for God’s sake. Is it fair to say that you think you initially start out with the idea of a regular structure and that’s a major organizing principle? Then when it gets down to development and plan you have to push apart the columns? From the very beginning. You think of that at the very beginning? Oh yes. A multi-storied building has to have a different scale at the bottom than it does elsewhere. Because the size of the site is not that big, I wanted to drive under it so that I didn’t have a lot of things coming out from the building. That meant certain dimensions are needed for the automobile that are not needed for the apartment. It meant a different structure from the very beginning. I also, from the very beginning, would start with a core. In this particular case it was in the middle because it’s obviously where the core needs to be. It also makes sense structurally to have four apartments per floor with the core in the middle of the circulation. You were asking how I really go about working and I can tell you exactly. I can think through 30

very elaborated schemes about a project. That’s what I do because I’m very busy. Because I’m constantly thinking about the thing I will think, “Oh, it could be this way or it could be that way.” Before making any sketches I will really think about it a great, great deal and, finally, I will resolve that into essentially three or maybe four—it depends on the project—schemes. I will then, always to scale, start sketching and try to bring it down to one scheme as quickly as possible. I have the ability now to think through and see, “Oh well, this won’t work very well.” It works on certain points, but it won’t work for others. When you first make those sketches, what kind of sketches are they? Anything that I can get my hands on. Will they tend to be a sketch in section? The section for me is as important as the plan, maybe more important because it tells you more about the space. I draw on the backs of napkins, any and everywhere. I will make lots of sketches, don’t misunderstand me. I hate to think how many sketches were made of this building. You don’t have one particular thing that you invariably start with? You don’t sit down and draw twelve columns? No, I would never think of doing that. I know what twelve columns are. I don’t have to draw that. That’s something that's not talked about very much with your buildings. They’re almost always reproduced in black and white. I guess there’s always a lot made of color with your Tuskeegee Chapel. Do you have any particular palette you’re interested in because of Southeast Asia? Well, I can’t say that I’m interested in a particular palette. For me, color is one of the most complex things in the world because it’s always so different in different lights, different quantities at different times of the day, and 31

when juxtaposed against other colors the actuality and the appearance are two different things. Maybe I’m very tentative about color because I tend to think that monochromatic schemes are the best. It has also has to do with the fact that people change things. Maybe if you’re tentative about the coloring then that's an invitation for them to change, I don’t know. One of the aspects of color that fascinates me is the reflected light from the color. I have worked with concrete, at least earlier, a great deal and I would often make a very warm-toned carpeting. The reflected light changed the concrete and bathed it in a warm light. I find much architecture very offensive in terms of its color, as a matter of fact. Is there much color in any of these projects? There’s no color in this; it’s white and gray, period. There’s a very real reason for that. There are a hundred different apartments here and each one of them will be God only knows what. Can you envision people putting up curtains behind the glass there? My business is to make it strong enough so that no matter what nonsense goes on there is still something. So, it won’t shock you when you go in and people have put up curtains? I’m beyond shocking. Ideally, what would they do? They wouldn’t put up any curtains. Well, I shouldn't say that—I genuinely think the window treatment for privacy can be done in many different ways in such a building. The fact of the matter is that because of the cantilevers involved you don’t see into the building so much. You see the underneath side of the building. The underneath side of these elements is tremendously important. 32

What’s the relation of this to your own house? The apartments up here are very similar in feeling; these are larger than my apartment but the handling of the space is very similar. Your work at your apartment certainly pre-dates this by some time. This Singapore project I imagine is like 1980 or something. Yes, and I started on my apartment before that, yes. You must understand that at least in terms of my domestic work much of that is spatially not unlike my apartment. The floor is a tray and the ceiling heights go from six-foot six to thirty feet. That is only to say that your apartment and this are part of the continuum. I should say about Grange Road that this is a building that I have been thinking about for thirty years. It cannot be built in the United States because of the labor involved. What specifically? The forming of the concrete is, let’s face it, very elaborate. There’s a great deal going on in this building, for better or for worse. There are many different apartment types and structurally and mechanically it becomes tremendously involved. I was just saying that this was not at all off the top of my head. It’s a marvelous example of a building that I’d really been thinking about in principle for a long, long time. We’re talking about a matter of economy there, then that it could be done. Yes, it could be. Do you think this could actually be built in a site in the United States? Would there be anything particularly inappropriate for this to be built?

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No. I think of it specifically for a warm climate because of the shading devices and the outside spaces. Do you know what this is? I couldn’t tell the owners this. This is a study of the use of modules. Do you know the project that I have done? I’ve done two major projects and, unfortunately, they’re unbuilt. One was for the Ford Foundation, for the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and the other is the Lithographer’s Union Graphic Arts Center. I took modules and hung them from masts and then cantilevered girders. Of all my proposals, that’s the building that I want to build the most. You can’t do that in Singapore, so this is a sketch for that, you see. Of course, if I told the owners that this is a sketch for what I think will ultimately be built with trailers, they would think I was out of my mind. That’s very interesting that you bring that up because the notion of the 1960s about megastructure—that is, certain parts that are fixed and other parts are added on to it—clearly had a lot of influence on what you were doing. How much do you think you were specifically influenced by the British Archigram and the megastructure people generally and how much has followed you? Oh gosh, I couldn’t say that. The notion of the “plug-in” you see doesn’t really interest me very much, frankly. It's a matter of economics. It is so expensive to get the thing done in the first place. It’s difficult for me to think that anybody's going to remove elements and change them a great deal. I think you change interior arrangements greatly. Also even with the modules or the trailers, I think only about twenty-eight percent of them actually get moved from a site because making the foundations and hooking them up with water is too great an expense. Once they are there then they are there. The portability is a misnomer to a degree. So many of buildings that came out of that, including a lot of Japanese buildings like Tange’s Yamanashi News Center. Clearly, you’re never going to take away a part of that or even add to that, but visually it implies that. Would you say that that’s true of your highrise work?

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I don’t really think of it that way. That isn’t to say that it couldn’t be because I think it’s implied. In my project for the Lower Manhattan Expressway that was clearly a part of the thinking because it was so large that programmatically things would change. In a building like this, which is relatively small, I don’t quite see it. Let me ask a more specific question. For example, one of the problems was the problem of monumentality. Everyone was talking about it constantly after World War II. Something like your Jewett Art Center at Wellesley College seems to have, in many ways, the same kinds of problems facing it as the chapel at the Air Force Academy. That is, you need something more than just a box and it's got to relate to other things. In fact, there is some kind of attempt to be Gothic in both of them. Were you consciously aware of being fellow travelers? You have to understand that I’m not too much interested in what other people are doing. I'm very selective about who I’m interested in. I would go around the world to see a Corbu building or a Wright building. I wouldn’t go across the street to see some things. It’s really true. I know it sounds terrible, but it’s absolutely true. Because I'm interested in feeling and understanding, I learn from traditional architecture; I don’t learn from modern architecture by and large. That’s the reason why I feel really lucky that I've traveled as much as I have. I don’t like looking at most twentieth-century buildings. I love looking at Wright and Corbu, but I don’t even like looking very much at Mies. I will make a special trip, if necessary, to see the Barcelona Pavilion, but I wouldn’t go very far to look at another Mies office building.

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Lower Manhattan Expressway New York, New York, 1967–1972 Sketch, crane and delivery truck

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Drawings

Tuskegee Chapel Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama, all drawings 1960

Tuskegee Chapel Plan 38

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Tuskegee Chapel below Sketch opposite Bird’s-eye view rendering

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Interama project International bazaar Miami, Florida, all drawings 1965

Interama project Terrace scheme, isometric 42

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Interama project top Sketch with bridge to kiosks bottom Section sketch of kiosks

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Interama project below Perspective rendering with bridge overleaf Section of typical kiosks

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ENDO Laboratories Garden City, New York, all drawings 1962

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ENDO Laboratories Bird’s-eye perspective rendering 51

ENDO Laboratories Facade detail with logo, elevation 52

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ENDO Laboratories Executive desk 54

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Lower Manhattan Expressway New York, NY, all drawings 1967–1972

Lower Manhattan Expressway Bird’s eye perspective, section rendering 56

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Lower Manhattan Expressway Perspective rendering including monorail 58

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Lower Manhattan Expressway Plan 61

Lower Manhattan Expressway View to Williamsburg Bridge, rendering

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Lower Manhattan Expressway left and below Sketches

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Lower Manhattan Expressway Sketch, plan of transit hub 67

Lower Manhattan Expressway opposite Section, sketch below Section with monorail

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Lower Manhattan Expressway opposite Perspective section above Bird’s eye perspective of towers at bridge 71

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Lower Manhattan Expressway Bird’s eye perspective

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Lower Manhattan Expressway above Perspective sketch left Perspective sketch overleaf Curving scheme, study 75

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Lower Manhattan Expressway Perspective sketches, transit hub and streetscape 79

Lower Manhattan Expressway Sketch of transit hub

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New Haven Government Center New Haven, Connecticut, all drawings 1968

New Haven Government Center above Study sketch, verso opposite top and bottom Plan, sketches 82

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New Haven Government Center opposite Orange Street elevation above Plaza 85

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New Haven Government Center Perspective renderings opposite Civic complex interior above Library interior 87

Parking Garage, Manager’s Office New Haven, Connecticut, all drawings 1961

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Parking Garage, Manager’s Office Ramp access diagram 89

Parking Garage, Manager’s Office Scheme D, rounded second-floor plan 90

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Parking Garage, Manager’s Office opposite top north elevation opposite middle and bottom Scheme B, oval, north and south elevations above Scheme A, square, manager’s office 93

New Haven

Payne Whitney Gymnasium 1959 Study 94

opposite Crawford Manor 1962 Fluted concrete block isometric drawing

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Church Street Redevelopment 1959 Hotel window system sketch 97

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Church Street Redevelopment 1958 Perspective with corner pavilion, looking south from New Haven Green 99

Analysis of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion All drawings 1986

(1)

(2)

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Analysis of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion Study drawings, 1986 1. visitor circulation 2. visitor’s path 3. “invisible” or “implied” planes radiating from the ends of vertical planes 4. “invisible” planes with their effect on movement through space 5. effect of light reflection from marble planes, most dark green, one in shades of red 101

23 Beekman Place New York, New York, all drawings 1965–1977

23 Beekman Place 1965–1977 above Sketch opposite Section sketch 102

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23 Beekman Place left sketch overleaf section

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23 Beekman Place Terrace with view to East River, perspective rendering 109

23 Beekman Place above Terrace aerial view, sketch opposite Terrace plan on summer solstice 110

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23 Beekman Place Terrace with water feature sketch 113

23 Beekman Place Furniture sketch

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23 Beekman Place Furniture sketches 117

23 Beekman Place Dining chair, side elevation 118

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23 Beekman Place Dining chair prototype opposite Front elevation above Plain view 121

23 Beekman Place Terrace, perspective 122

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Modulightor Inc. 246 East 58th Street, New York, NY, all drawings 1989

Modulightor Inc. above Facade details, sketch opposite Facade study, sketch 124

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Modulightor Inc. Perspective, rendering

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Wisma Dharmala Jakarta, Indonesia, all drawings 1982

Wisma Dharmala Plan sketch 128

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Wisma Dharmala opposite Perspective sketch above Perspective plan 131

The Concourse Beach Road, Singapore, all drawings 1979–1981

The Concourse Aerial perspective, rendering 132

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The Concourse Perspective, office tower 135

David Eu Residence Singapore

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David Eu Residence above Section, sketch overleaf Perspective rendering 137

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The Tools A collection of pencils and pens used by Paul Rudolph 140

Biography

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Paul Rudolph (born 1918, Elkton, Kentucky) studied architecture at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University). His graduate studies, under Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, were interrupted by his three-year service in the navy during World War II. He completed his architecture degree at Harvard in 1947. His career started in Sarasota, Florida, in the firm of Ralph Twitchell, and was notable for the airy “Sarasota modern” homes that he designed specifically for the region’s tropical climate. In 1952, he established his own firm while garnering awards, lecturing, and taking on international commissions before becoming Chair of the School of Architecture at Yale University in 1957. While at Yale, he established an office in New Haven that took on myriad commissions on campus and in the city: Greeley Memorial Lab, the Temple Street garage, and the building that came to define his career, Yale’s Art & Architecture Building. In 1965, as his work started to take a less functional and more sculptural turn, Rudolph left Yale and moved his practice to New York City, where his continued popularity led him to notable residential, civic, and institutional commissions, including the Burroughs Wellcome Headquarters, New Haven Government Center, the Deane Residence, the Bass Residence, and his own townhome on Beekman Place. In the 1980s, Rudolph began working extensively in Asia, where he received commissions for large-scale apartment and mixed-use towers. He responded by applying region-specific materials and solutions to high-density urban layouts. The Colonnade and the Concourse buildings, both in Singapore, and the Lippo (Bond) Center in Hong Kong exemplify the monumental approach of his late career. Before his death in 1997, Rudolph donated his career-spanning archive to the Library of Congress.

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Credits John Morris Dixon was chief editor of the influential Progressive Architecture magazine from 1972 to 1996. He continues to edit and contribute to books and periodicals on the subject of architecture. He has lectured widely, including a talk on “Rudolph and the Press” in 2011 at the Rudolph Architectural Heritage Foundation in New York. A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, he has chaired its national Committee on Design, on which he remains active. He is a member of the board of DOCOMOMO New York/Tristate, a regional chapter of an international organization dedicated to the documentation and preservation of Modern architecture. For many years he served on the Architectural Review Committee of the town of Greenwich, CT, where he lives, and he is currently a member of the Greenwich Historical Society’s board of trustees. Eugenia Bell is an editor based in Brooklyn. She was the executive editor of Design Observer from 2014 to 2016 and the design editor of Frieze from 2007 to 2012. Her writing on art, design, architecture, and books has appeared in Frieze, Artforum, and Bookforum, among others.

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