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Article published Apr 30, 2006 Archictects cast lingering shadow on local design Picture
By HAROLD BUBIL ORIGINS OF THE FORM [email protected] More photos Paul Rudolph and Ralph Twitchell will not be among the panelists when the Herald- Tribune takes up the subject of architecture at its annual "Ask the Experts" forum next Picture STAFF PHOTO ILLUSTRATION / weekend. MELISSA RIVENBURGH / IMAGES Both men are deceased, but their legacy will cast a big shadow as a panel of three FROM 'PAUL RUDOLPH: architects, two professors and one developer discuss "Architecture Then and Now" at 2 THE FLORIDA HOUSES', p.m. Saturday at the newspaper's new building at 1741 Main St., Sarasota (see HERALD-TRIBUNE ARCHIVE information box on page 4). In the 1940s and '50s. Twitchell and Rudolph, as partners and then individuals, set local architecture on a path of revolution and evolution that continues to this day, as Mediterranean Revival buildings battle contemporary structures for dominance in the skyline.
"We're in this big development period, and it's useful to talk around what are we up to, and put it in the context of time," says Joe King, a forum panelist and co-author of "Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses."
"It's on everybody's mind. Architecture matters here."
But when you look at the high-rises going up downtown, it's apparent that the developers' minds are in different places. Beau Ciel, Rivo at Ringling and Marina Tower, among the newer buildings, are contemporary. But the Grande Sarasotan, proposed for Gulf Stream Avenue at U.S. 41, could be considered Med Rev. Same thing up the Trail at Alinari, and downtown at 100 Central. And Golden Gate Point is becoming a home for domes. Picture Picture Twitchell and Rudolph
In a simpler time, when Sarasota was emerging from the Great Depression, a progressive architect and builder named Ralph Twitchell was searching for solutions to the challenge of living comfortably in Florida's climate.
Twitchell was asked to come to Florida by Dwight James Baum in the 1920s. Baum designed Cà d'Zan for John Ringling, and he needed someone to supervise construction, particularly of the detailing, says Twitchell's son, Tollyn, a Sarasota resident and architect.
After the real estate boom collapsed, Ralph Twitchell did neoclassical houses in the Northeast, wintering in Sarasota. He opened a Sarasota office in 1936 and got a big assignment -- design of the much-loved, Art Deco-influenced Lido Casino in the 1938.
"It was a party pavilion," says King. "People enjoyed all of that. So that was an impetus to saying, 'Well, if we can do that in a big public building, we can do it in houses.'"
It also triggered Twitchell's transition to modernism.
While summering in Connecticut, he kept up with developments in architecture -- Frank Lloyd Wright's Florida Southern College and Fallingwater were influences -- and nurtured relationships with magazine editors "who were looking for stuff to publish," says Tollyn.
Ralph gave it to them, says Tollyn Twitchell. While traveling through Ocala, he found "Ocala block" and used it to make economical wall systems. His use of deep overhangs, terrazzo floors, "Lamolithic" poured-concrete construction, and slab-on-grade foundations established his reputation for embracing new materials and techniques for Florida's climate, topography and resources.
He also had the good sense to hire a young architectural talent fresh out of Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now known as Auburn University. Paul Rudolph worked for Ask the Experts Printer Friendly Article Page 2 of 3 Twitchell for several months before going off to Harvard for advanced study under Walter "Architecture Then and Now," 2 p.m. Gropius, one of the three kings (along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier) Saturday, May 6, followed by wine-and- cheese reception at 4. of modern architecture at the time. "Working With an Architect," 2 p.m. Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus design school in Germany, left his homeland after the Sunday, May 7, followed by light Nazi government shut down the left-leaning Bauhaus in 1933, despite the efforts of Mies refreshments at 4.
(then its leader) to save it by cleansing it of its ideological bias. Gropius eventually landed Herald-Tribune Building, 1741 Main St., at Harvard and Mies at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where they infused Sarasota. American students with the principles of the geometric, ornament-free International Style. Admission is $20 Saturday; free Sunday. "What I enjoy about the story is that Walter Gropius was a proponent of what he called Information: 361-4805. regional modernism," says King. "Gropius was really understanding that if modernism was going to be useful and effective and part of people's lives, it had to suit both the sort of incredible new century, and also the particular areas of place." Linked stories Preserving buildings a hot issue So Rudolph brought a filtered Bauhaus influence directly to Sarasota architecture. When 05/06/2006 he returned to Sarasota after World War II, his Harvard degree in hand, he rejoined The very good old days of Sarasota Twitchell's practice. They proceeded to collaborate on some of the most important architecture buildings ever constructed here, including the 1950 "Cocoon House," which had a roof 04/30/2006 that was curved downward and coated in the same material used to mothball ships at the end of the war. Rudolph learned about the material as a Naval officer.
National recognition
Another ground-breaking building was the 1948 Revere Quality House, built to show off the use of Revere copper in a residential setting. It won a national award from the American Institute of Architects.
Both houses still stand, the Cocoon restored and the Revere undergoing restoration.
"They were revolutionaries, they broke the mold," says John Howey, who wrote the 1995 book "The Sarasota School of Architecture," which chronicles the history of mid-century modernism on the Gulf Coast. "They were the square pegs in the round hole. They had no respect for the status quo, particularly Rudolph.
"Rudolph was the visionary who really set modernism on its ear," says Howey. "Modernism was already here -- the Sarasota school of architecture is the one group, along with the California Case Study house group, that were the real visionaries after World War II.
"They did a particular thing in a particular climate, and answered the questions of the climate and how to solve it. They set them off the ground (following the lead of early Cracker houses) ... and did different things that were unique to Sarasota," including the big overhangs, the open floor plans and the large plates of glass to bring the outdoors in. Sliding-glass doors later allowed flow- through ventilation before air-conditioning was widely available."
Memories of Paul
Tim Seibert, a retired architect who is another "Ask the Experts" panelist, remembers Paul Rudolph well. He suffered the stings of Rudolph's criticism early in his career, in the 1950s. But he recalls with pride Rudolph's evaluation of Seibert's Bay Plaza condominium three decades later.
"Paul came and said that I had done a successful and nice building," Seibert says. "I guess I was about 60 then, and I actually had a tear in my eye. I was very touched."
Rudolph reached the height of his influence as dean of the architecture school at Yale in the 1960s. In the 1970s and '80s, the rise of post-modernism sent his career into decline, and most of his commissions came from Asia. He died in 1997, and is now recognized as among the greatest American architects of his generation.
The breakup
In the early '50s, the Twitchell-Rudolph partnership became strained. Another young architect of the time, Gene Leedy, recalls that Rudolph was the design talent, while Twitchell excelled in management, construction and client relations.
"Rudolph ... stayed up night and day and did all the working drawings on the Revere House," says Leedy, of Winter Haven. "And that was built and got a national AIA award. Rudolph says that Twitchell never touched those drawings. And he says, they went up to get the award ... and Twitchell got up and accepted the award and made a long speech, and then sat down next to Rudolph and never said a word to him."
When the bitter Rudolph opened his own office in 1951, he hired Leedy and Mark Hampton, who served as go-betweens, Leedy Printer Friendly Article Page 3 of 3 says, on unfinished Twitchell-Rudolph jobs.
Tollyn Twitchell remembers things differently. He says some clients didn't want to work with Rudolph, who was all-architect-all-the- time.
"Paul became fairly well known, but a lot of people didn't want to work with him," he says. "He didn't have a salesman's personality, let's put it that way. He could be pushy, and if he was working with one of his designs and said he loved it, he would damn-near shove it down the client's throat."
"Ralph was a diplomat," says King. "That's what made the partnership work. He would sweet-talk those clients."
Rudolph also loved to submit exquisitely detailed renderings to the architectural magazines in hopes of getting them printed, and often they were.
And while Twitchell was summering up North, Tollyn says, Rudolph spent a lot of office hours doing this.
"He spent all his time, except sleeping, working on architecture," Tollyn says. "But what really finalized it was he started sending stuff up under his name rather than the firm's name, when Ralph wasn't around. Ralph kind of put it to him after he came back one summer and said, 'If you want to run under your name, maybe you ought to go out on your own,'" Tollyn recalls. "I'm sure they had a fight, because that's the way Rudolph was. And he went on his own. Ralph was never bitter about things like that. He had an idea of what was appropriate."
Twitchell died in 1978 in Sarasota, but his contributions to local architecture live on.
Says King, "If you understand architecture in Sarasota, in some way you understand it through Twitchell and Rudolph. It should go back to the idea of place. In Sarasota, there's always been the feeling that architecture is important. The people who set the stage for that were Twitchell and Rudolph -- the idea that it is possible to have design exellence in this place."
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