Test your Design IQ

MANILA, Philippines - Who is the American modernist architect who worked on landmark projects like New York City’s Grand Central Terminal; the Biltmore Hotel and the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach; and the Park Lane, Lexington, Pierre, and Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York?

He was born in Chicago on December 5, 1877 and educated in the City College of New York, where he was one of the most successful pupils of Emmanuel Louis Masquerray.

He then worked for the firm Warren and Wetmore for 20 years, during which time he worked on the designs for such projects as New York’s Grand Central Terminal.

In 1921, he went into a partnership with S. Fullerton Weaver, creating a mutli-disciplinary firm focusing on real estate, architecture, and engineering. A major early commission, John McEntee Bowman’s Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, led to many other Biltmore properties across the country. Designed in a Spanish-Colonial Renaissance style, the hotel was meant as a grand icon, a landmark of luxury, signifying Los Angeles’ arrival as a major American City.

The firm also designed the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, as well as several noted landmark hotels in the city like the Park Lane Hotel, the Lexington Hotel, the Pierre Hotel, and the Sherry Netherland. Their crown jewel, however, was the opulent Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York which, upon completion in 1931, was the world’s largest hotel with 2,200 rooms.

He and his firm became known for designing large apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, and clubs, as well as office buildings, including the New York headquarters of JC Penney Company. He was also instrumental in the design of a number of large-        scale residential developments, including Parkfairfax in Virginia with Clarke and Rapuano, Park La Brea in Lost Angeles, and most notably, Parkmerced in San Francisco, which the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company developed in response to US housing shortages after World War II.

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Last week’s question: Who is the American celebrity chef best known for his Louisiana cuisine and has contributed several recipes to the meal selection aboard the International Space Station as part of general NASA effort to improve the quality of the food supply for astronauts?

Answer: Emeril Lagasse

Winner: Oscar Santos of Project 7, QC

Text your answer to 0926-3508061 with your name and address. One winner will be chosen through a raffle of texts with the correct answer. The winner will receive P2,000 worth of SM gift certificates for use at Our Home, SM Department Store, or SM Supermarket. They can claim their prize at Our Home in SM Megamall. Bring photocopies of two valid IDs and a clipping of the Design Quiz issue in which you appear as winner.