Paul Rudolph

PAUL RUD LPH Acknowledgments Program 13ll ' \ This booklet and the exhibi- Chicago architectural com- Exhibition Front cover: tion it accompanies are the munity to learn more about May 6-28, 1987, in the second- Overall perspective of a fourth in The Art Institute of his work through this exhibi- floor gallery of the Graham corporate office building for Wisma Dharmala Sakti. Chicago's Architecture in tion and his lecture at the Foundation for Advanced Jakarta , Indonesia, 1982 Context series, which is in- Graham Foundation. Studies in the Fine Arts, [no. 29). tended to highlight aspects We wish to thank Robert 4 West Burton Place, Chicago. of architecture that Bruegmann, Associate Pro- Graham Foundation hours: Back cover: Atrium perspective of a have not received sufficient fessor of Architecture and Monday through Thursday, corporate office building for critical attention. The current Art History at University of 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Wisma Dharmala Sakti, exhibition broadens that Illinois at Chicago, for his Jakarta, Indonesia, 1982 focus by concentrating on insightful essay and for work- Lecture [no. 32) . the current work of New York ing with Paul Rudolph to Paul Rudolph, "The Archi- © 1987 Graham Foundation architect Paul Rudolph, who, select the drawings for inclu- tectural Space of Wright, for Advanced Studies in the admittedly, has been pro- sion in the exhibition. We Mies, and Le Corbusier," May Fine Arts and The Art Institute foundly influenced by Chica- also wish to thank Ronald 6, 1987, the Graham Founda- of Chicago. All rights reserved. go architects Frank Lloyd Chin, for coordinating the tion Auditorium, 8:00 p .m. Printed in the United States Wright and Ludwig Mies van organization of the exhibition of America. der Rohe and their French and publication in Rudolph's Previous Architecture in Designed by counterpart, Le Corbusier. office; Robert Sharp, Context booklets are availa- Susan Johnson Design, Although Rudolph is well- Associate Editor at the Art ble in the Art Institute's Chicago, Ulinois. known for his important Institute, for editing and Museum Shop: modernist buildings of the coordinating publication of Architecture in Context: 1960s and 19.70s, his current this booklet; and Susan 360 North Michigan Avenue work is comparatively un- Johnson for her design of known. The purpose of this this publication. Architecture in Context: exhibition is to redress that The exhibition, booklet, The Avant-Garde in oversight by presenting a and accompanying lecture Chicago's Suburbs, Paul selection of drawings, more by Mr. Rudolph were jointly Schweikher and William than half of which represent sponsored by the Graham Ferguson Deknatel four of Rudolph's recent pro- Foundation for Advanced Architecture in Context: jects - a mixed-use complex Studies in the Fine Arts and The Postwar American and an apartment building, the Architecture Society Fel- Dream both in Singapore, a pair of lows and the Department of office towers in Hong Kong, Architecture at The Art Insti- and a corporate headquarters tute of Chicago. We wish in Jakarta. We are extremely especially to acknowledge grateful to Paul Rudolph for Carter H. Manny, Jr., Director his enthusiasm and coopera- of the Graham Foundation, tion in organizing this exhibi- for his continued support of tion and for enabling the the Architecture in Context exhibition series and for his advice and support of the Rudolph exhibition. Pauline Saliga Assistant Curator of Architecture The Art Institute of Chicago Robert Bruegmann PAUL RUD LPH Four Recent Proj ects in Southeast Asia I. Introduction o story in recent architecture is more compelling than modernist ideas, was to reason that, since man's most basic needs that of Paul Rudolph and his recent work in Southeast are everywhere similar and since modern engineering could NAsia. On the one hand there is his towering figure and meteoric overcome almost all site and climate problems, a solution from career. From a small practice in Florida in the 1950s Rudolph's Berlin should be applicable, with only minor modification, in talent for drawing, design, and teaching rocketed him by the late Teheran or Manila. At the other extreme were those who in the 1960s to the pinnacle of the architectural world. While he was last few years have argued that local building traditions and ver- chairman of the School of Architecture at Yale University, his nacular techniques are more appropriate than self-expression as major commissions were found on the pages of every architec- bases for design, and that, therefore, a building in the West tural journal. But as the architectural world started to undergo should look entirely different from a building in the non-Western fundamental changes in the 1970s and as modernism came under world. Needless to say, most architects have tried to chart a mid- attack, Paul Rudolph proved an oversized and irresistible target dle course between these extremes, but few observers would to critics of modernism such as Robert Venturi. Refusing to accept claim that the results are usually satisfactory. When Rudolph's many of the basic assumptions of the new cultural climate, teacher Walter Gropius, for example, proposed a mosque for Rudolph continued to work, though he did so increasingly on Damascus in the shape of a great onion dome, it seemed to many commissions far from home and outside the spotlight of public- observers more like a parody of the long Islamic tradition of ity. Now, in the late 1980s, almost 70 years old but still erect and monumental architecture than an intelligent use of it. In the case intensely involved in his work, Rudolph is tackling some of the ofmultistoried office and commercial buildings in regions where most challenging commissions of his career, and he is apparently the vernacular consists mostly of frame dwellings, the problem being rediscovered by a younger generation who see in him a becomes even more acute. Thus, the case of Paul Rudolph in great master, a heroic figure who refused to capitulate to what Southeast Asia is especially interesting. they see as the self-indulgent, permissive trends of the last two Resolutely modernist in his thinking, unyielding in his insis- decades. tence on working out his own architectural ideas, and totally The second main theme of this story is the collision of the unsympathetic to the borrowing of applied historical motifs, Western and non-Western architectural worlds. Since the Rudolph has nevertheless throughout his career rejected the nineteenth century architects from Europe and America have minimalism of those he calls the "international stylists," and he struggled with the problem of how to create buildings that are has tried to accommodate his work to very specific sites and fully modern by Western standards but also accommodate site contexts. The four projects featured in this exhibition are tes- and climate as well as the cultural traditions of lands elsewhere timony to the struggle of a committed modernist to adapt Western in the world. One extreme solution, the ultimate extension of modernism to the context of a totally different environment. II. Paul Rudolph and his Career Paul Marvin Rudolph was born in 1918 in Elkton, Kentucky, the according to a local method using native limestone as a perma- son of a Methodist minister. After attending a succession of nent formwork for the reinforced concrete. schools across the South, Rudolph studied architecture between During his early years in practice, Rudolph was in demand as 1935 and 1940 at the Alabama Polytechnique Institute in Auburn, a guest teacher at schools of architecture across the country. This, Alabama, and then entered the Harvard Graduate School of in turn, led to the most conspicuous event in his early career, his Design in 1941 to work under Walter Gropius. After a stint in the appointment in 1958 as chairman of the School of Architecture Navy between 1943 and 1946, he returned to Harvard to finish at Yale University. During his brilliant but controversial chair- his master's in architecture in 1947. Moving to Sarasota, Florida, manship (1958-65), he brought to the school a flood of new ideas he practiced in partnership with Ralph Twitchell for four years and many famous designers from around the world. At the same before starting his own practice in 1951. His early commissions time he produced a series of important commissions. The most were primarily for houses and guest houses in the southern states prominent single building was the Art and Architecture Building (fig. 1). While heavily influenced by the International Style at Yale (fig. 2) . In that structure Rudolph provided one of the most architecture he was exposed to at Harvard, Rudolph's houses spectacular monuments of the movement in architecture in the were marked by a lightness and airiness made possible by his 1960s away from the smooth minimalism that characterized adventurous use of structure, new building techniques, and a much of the work of the day. Like his colleagues Eero Saarinen responsiveness to site achieved through the careful organization and Louis Kahn, Rudolph attempted to take the tenets of moder- of plan and the use of overhangs, sun screens, and louvers. nism and push them further in an attempt to regain richness and In the mid-1950s Rudolph received three prominent commis- monumentality. In the A & A Building the large number of very sions for works outside the South. One, for a United States particular and complex spaces was in part a response to elements Embassy in Amman, Jordan, was not built, but two others - an in the program. In part they also represented an attempt to fuse office building for Blue Cross-Blue Shield in Boston and the spatial and structural elements derived from Le Corbusier and Jewett Arts Center for Wellesley College - were constructed.

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