Let’s remember American architect Paul Marvin Rudolph (1918 –1997) who would have been 99 today. While growing up in traditional Alabama, he had become an avant-gardist, immersing in modernism from the time he studied under Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius at the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Rudolph served as the Chair of the famed Yale University’s School of Architecture for six years, and famously designed its Brutalist Art and Architecture Building (below). Since opening his practice in 1951 he built gems evolving from Modernism, to Brutalism, to the rough New Brutalism, and to sleek glass structures. Among his landmarks are the Bass Residence in Fort Worth, the Orange County Government Center, and the Colonnade Condominiums. But his most glamour, his most urban triumph was definitely the triplex penthouse, on 23 Beekman Place (Below in a recent visit to the building), which he called ‘home’ from 1961 until his death. If you walk in this magical block, you would identify it immediately as it looks like a steel-frame and glass cage, set on top a brick building. It is perhaps the most spectacular example of Space-Age interior I know. So today, we remember Paul Rudolph with whom I share a birth date.
