Styleture

The results are in!

We asked our Facebook Fans and our Twitter Followers what famous architect or designer they would want to meet, past or present and here is the list of the architects that we received. It is really impossible to sum up any one of these architects, but we’ve done our best to give readers a brief snapshot of their lives and their work. Feel free to comment below with your choice, or to Tweet us your favorite or respond on Facebook!

Frank Lloyd Wright

1. Frank Lloyd Wright - It is no surprise here that Frank Lloyd Wright was chosen more times than any other designer OR architect. As one of the most famous and glamorous architects in the United States with over 1,000 works and 500 completed works all across the country bringing droves of visitors year after year, Frank Lloyd Wright has left his mark on the country.

While it wasn’t noted by anyone in particular, there is something about Frank’s actual life story that also intrigues people. Frank did live a tumultuous life that was unpredictable as he did what he wanted without a care which you could see in his work and his personal life.

Frank left his wife and six children to take up with a client’s wife, Mamah Cheney, which was a very scandalous relationship for those days. They traveled across Europe before settling down in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Mamah, her two children, and four others were murdered later by Frank’s male servant from Barbados while Frank was working in Chicago.  The killer, Julian Carlton, set fire to Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s estate, and attacked the people escaping the fire with an axe. His life was then filled with more marriages & divorces, a wife with a morphine addiction, custody battles and even a long term marriage with his last wife whom he was with until he passed in 1959. Frank led an extremely interesting life, and he never retired, working until he passed at the age of 91.

Fallingwater - Photo by Sxenko

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I.M. Pei

2. Ieoh Ming Pei – I. M. Pei - The next featured architect is the Chinese-born American architect who came to the United States at the age of 17 to study architecture. As a truly brilliant architect, I. M. Pei received the Alpha Rho Chi Medal, the MIT Traveling Fellowship, and the AIA Gold Medal when he graduated with his Bachelors of Architecture degree from MIT.  Pei studied under Walter Gropius at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and volunteered his services to the National Defense Research Committee in Princeton. He later completed his Masters of Architecture at Harvard and went on to teach at the university.

Mr. Pei is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a Corporate Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Design, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (as the first Architect to hold the position of Chancellor of the Academy which is restricted to a lifetime membership of 50), “Membre de l’Institut de France”, decorated by the French government as a Commandeur in the “Ordre des Arts et des Lettres”, he receive the Medal of Liberty from President Ronald Reagan, the French president François Mitterrand made I. M. Pei an Officier in the Légion d’Honneur, he was elected an Honorary Academician of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Académie d’Architecture de France elected him a Foreign Member and he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

While it is impossible to name all of I. M. Pei’s achievements and noteworthy works here, it is clear that he has always had a deep interest in the arts and education which he has helped in a way that is literally immeasurable by any standards. Ieoh Ming Pei is a one of a kind architect that would be a very interesting meeting. He is now 92 and is currently working on the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina which is scheduled to open on May 11, 2010.

JFK Library - Photo by Eric Baetscher

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Antoni Gaudí

3. Antoni Gaudí - This was a great choice that you might not have thought of. Gaudí was famous for his unique and highly individualistic designs in the Gothic style. Gaudí was part of the Modernist style (Art Nouveau) movement. Antoni Gaudí was often ill as a child so he was required to stay in isolation and amongst nature which inspired his designs later on in his life. It seemed he was determined to build the most wonderful church in the world in Barcelona. Gaudí was a devout Catholic and after numerous friends and family passed away while he was working on the La Sagrada Família the work on the project slowed and he became a recluse. Despite his misfortunes later in life, the amazing thought and detail that has gone into this project is absolutely amazing.

He once said on the subject of Gothic architecture:

“Gothic art is imperfect, it means to solve; it is the style of the compass, the formula of industrial repetition. Its stability is based on the permanent propping of abutments: it is a defective body that holds with support… Gothic works produce maximum emotion when they are mutilated, covered with ivy and illuminated by the moon.”

Gaudí spent ten years working on studies for the design of La Sagrada Família and developing a new method of structural calculation that used cords and small sacks of lead that used different weights to achieve natural forms in his works. The project was started in 1882 and taken over by Gaudí in 1883 and it is not expected to be finished until 2026. To this day, Gaudí stands as one of the most original architects of all time.

“Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator.”

Sagrada Família - Photo by Julien Lagarde

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Richard Joseph Neutra

4. Richard Joseph Neutra - Richard Neutra is considered one of modernism’s most important architects and another excellent choice. Neutra briefly worked for Frank Lloyd Wright, but went on to make a name for himself. He was celebrated in California for his West Coast variation on the mid-century modern residence. His clients loved him because he paid close attention to their needs at a time that other architects were imposing their artistic visions on their clients without taking their needs into account. Neutra even used detailed questionnaires to find out exactly what his clients were looking for in their home.

The house that Neutra built for Dr. P.M. Lovell  in 1928 brought him international recognition and you can see his influence in many houses in the hills around Los Angeles. The home’s structure was designed to bring a close relationship with the health factors of nature as it is built on a steep hill it overlooks the Pacific Ocean, the Santa Monica mountains, and at night the city of Los Angeles.

Other noteworthy works include the Desert House designed in 1946 for Edgar Kaufmann in the deserts near Palm Springs, the Tremaine House in the sweeping in the tree-laden meadowland of Montecito and the sleek glass and steel Miller House in Palm Springs.

Richard Neutra had an ironic and interesting sense of humor, surely making a meeting with him interesting to say the least.

“Architects must have a razor sharp sense of individuality.”

Lovell Health House- Casa de Saúde

Lovell House Present Day

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Craig Ellwood - Photo by Bob Willoughby, courtesy CSPU Pomona

5. Craig Ellwood - Craig Ellwood (whose birth name was Jon Nelson Burke) is another extremely influential Los Angeles-based architect who was a local celebrity in Los Angeles. Craig Ellwood is an interesting choice as someone to meet, because he had no formal architectural education or training and was entirely a self taught architect. This might make for an interesting conversation as to how he was able to become so successful without spending any time in the classroom.

Craig had a great personality, which helped him promote his natural talent and excellent eye for design to become an architectural superstar. Like all of the architects in this list, Craig was also very ambitious and self-motivated which allowed him to become famous for combining the styles of the most famous modern architects with the more informal styles seen in California modernism.

“I became really aware of Mies’s work around ‘55 or ‘56. I had been aware of Mies, but never having studied architecture I wasn’t really aware of many architects other than those in California working in Los Angeles? When I discovered his work, it was an astonishing revelation to me. His elegant use and expression of structure, his floor plans, his details, his plays of planes and spaces were perfection. He was the architect I wanted to be, and his work would highly influence mine.” (From ‘Life is a Bottomless Barrel’)

Craig would secure his projects and come up with the ideas and visions for them before handing them over to a licensed architect who would draw up the technical plans and help implement the build. He build a few “Case Study Houses” in Los Angeles, his favorite being Case Study House 16 (Case Study Houses was a residential experiment sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, as a way to introduce the ideas of the modern movement to affordable and efficient housing during the post-war years in the US.)

“Of my three Case Study Houses, I think perhaps Case Study House 16 is the best.”

His early works were very well received, which allowed him to obtain larger projects including the master plan for the Rand Corporation’s headquarters in Santa Monica,various Xerox and IBM offices and the trademark “bridge building” dramatically spanning an arroyo and roadway at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Ellwood continues to be a cherished architect in the Los Angeles area and his buildings are still held in high regard.

Case Study House 16

Tags: Antoni Gaudí, Charles Mackintosh, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Craig Ellwood, famous architect, famous architects, frank lloyd wright, I. M. Pei, IM Pei, Neutra, Richard Joseph Neutra