Test your design IQ
MANILA, Philippines - Who is the Pritzker Prize-winning American-Irish designer known for his creative work with glass and for creating unique and distinct images for corporate headquarters like the Ford Foundation Building and the General Foods Headquarters?
He was born on June 14, 1922 in Dublin, Ireland and had his first opportunity to design and build at 17, when he did a cheese warehouse for his father, a successful agricultural businessman in Mitchelstown, Ireland.
After earning his architecture degree from the National University of Ireland in 1943 and working briefly for Dublin architect Michael Scott and for Maxwell Fry in London, he decided to immigrate to the United States in 1948.
In the same year, he entered the Illinois Institute of Technology, studying under Mies van der Rohe, and received his master’s in 1949.
In 1950, he joined the firm of Ero Saarinen and Associates where by 1954 he became the principal associate in design, with basic authority for all their projects.
After Saarinen’s death in 1961, he joined forces with the firm’s partner John Dinkeloo and completed Saarinen’s unfinished work, which included the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, the TWA Terminal at JFK Airport, and the Dulles International Airport Terminal in Northern Virginia.
The Ford Foundation Building in New York City was his most important early design. It was in this building built in 1967 that the architect employed Corten steel for the first time in the facade of an urban building. The 12-story structure consists of offices situated along two sides of a covered enclosed garden courtyard. The purity of the steel-and-glass walls are reminiscent of Mies van der Rohe and contrast with monumental granite-veneered supporting piers. Each office faces the courtyard, which also functions as a public space, reinforcing a sense of community and family within the large corporate structure. The concept of creating a community-oriented building and making provisions for public space are a recurring theme in his work.
How buildings respond to the automobile is another predominant theme in his work. He was one of the first architects to grasp the realities of an automobile society by consciously designing buildings with this view in mind. His design for the College Life Insurance Company (1967-1971) is a complex of identically designed blue-glassed pyramidal forms located on a rural site in Indiana at the intersection of two highways. The simplicity and monumental scale of the pyramids make them visually effective for a person driving by an automobile at 55 miles per hour.
He learned from Saarinen the ability to work with big corporate complexes and supply them with a dominant commercial image. These became the cornerstone of his practice and made up the largest part of his work.
His design for the General Foods Headquarters (1977-1982) in Rye, New York was a glistening white, symmetrically balanced building situated on an expansive suburban site. The juxtaposition of massive forms against steel and glass found in his earlier work was replaced by pristine white panels and ribbon windows providing the building with a clean, delicate appearance.
He continued to explore these themes in his later designs for the Bouygues World Headquarters (1983-1989) outside Paris, France, which had formal allustions to the Royal Palace at Versailles. His other well known works include the Central Park Zoo in New York and the Nations Bank Plaza in Atlanta.
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Last week’s question: Who is this British sculptor, photographer and painter, one of the best-known land artists in the world? He made his international reputation during the 1970s with sculptures made as the result of epic walks, these take him through rural and remote areas in Britain, or as far afield as the plains of Canada, Mongolia and Bolivia.
Answer: Richard Long
Winner: Adel Alegato of Project 8, QC
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