MANILA, Philippines - Who is the 20th-century American architect best known for his collaboration with Nelson Rockefeller and designing New York landmarks like the United Nations headquarters, the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center, and La Guardia airport?
He was born on Sept. 28, 1895 and started his professional career in the firm of Corbett, Harrison and MacMurray, participating in the construction of the Rockefeller Center.
He is best known for executing large public projects in New York City and upstate, many of them the result of his long and fruitful personal relationship with Nelson Rockefeller, for whom he served as an adviser.
Architecturally, his major projects are marked by straightforward planning and sensible functionalism, although his residential side projects show more experimental and humane flair.
In 1931, he established an 11-acre summer retreat in West Hills, New York, which was a very early example and workshop for the International Style in the United States, and a social and intellectual center for art, architecture, and politics. The home includes a 32-foot circular living room that is rumored to have been the prototype for the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center. Two other circular rooms complete the center of Harrison’s design.
From 1941 to 1943, he designed and built the Clinton Hills Coops, a 12-building coop complex split between two “campuses” along Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, to house the Brooklyn Navy Yards workers.
His major works include the United Nations headquarters complex, coordinating the work of an international cadre of designers including Sven Markelius, Le Corbusier, and Oscar Niemeyer, among others; and the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, coordinating the work of Pietro Belluschi, Gordon Bunshaft, Philip Johnson, and Eero Saarinen.
Other projects include the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, the Battery Park Complex in New York City, and La Guardia airport. He also did extensive work in the Rockefeller Center — the Time-Life Building, the Exxon Building, and the Rockefeller Apartments, commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller, facing the Museum of Modern Art Sculpture Garden.
He also built other landmark structures outside New York, like the Hilles Library at Harvard University, the National City Tower in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Erieview Tower in Cleveland, Ohio.
His last project before his death on Dec. 2, 1981, was the Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York.
His architectural drawings and archives are held by the Drawings and Archives Department of Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.
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Answer: Aaron Sanchez
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