When I arrived at the ID, Institute of Design, in 1976, very little of László Moholy-Nagy’s legacy was left. Jay Doblin, the next leading director of the school, as it is told, had rubbish trucks come to remove the emptied-out legacies of the Chicago Bauhaus and its traditions. There was a faculty revolt, and a […]
Biography
Larry Klein
Larry Klein and his wife were our next door neighbor in Evanston, IL, in 1976, when I was appointed to the ID Institute of Design in Chicago, IL. My wife and I moved into a carriage house that originally was connected to the Klein house. The long hall or covered walkway had been removed and […]
Christopher Alexander
Community and Privacy, with Serge Chermayeff (1963) Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964) A City is Not a Tree (1965) The Atoms of Environmental Structure (1967) A Pattern Language which Generates Multi-service Centers, with Ishikawa and Silverstein (1968) Houses Generated by Patterns (1969) The Grass Roots Housing Process (1973)[46] The Center for Environmental Structure Series, […]
James F. Pfeufer
James F. Pfeufer was born in Comfort, TX in 1912. His grandparents were members of the German Freethinker movement who settled the area around 1848. He was raised in Harlem, NY, where he became an artist, scholar and clarinetist. He was high school class valedictorian, and attended City College of New York. A lifelong teacher […]
Frank Boas, Edward Sapir, and Philip Morrison
I have always been interested in trying to understand my loves, but even more importantly, to understand from where and whom my biases come. What is it that prompted me to prefer something over something else? Who lifted or lowered the curtain over my choice of realities, either tried to shield me or tried to […]
Ralph Coburn
Ralph Coburn was born in Minneapolis, MN in 1923. His father taught romance languages at the University of Minnesota. In 1926 the family moved to Miami, FL, where his parents founded a private school. The Coburn School was run by Ralph’s father who spoke six languages, while his British born mother who had lived in […]
Carl Zahn
When I became an associate at Leverett A. Peters, Associates, Carl Zahn dropped in one day unannounced, just to see what was going on in this new studio on Boston’s Boylston Street, across from the Public Library. Carl Zahn’s professionalism was highly regarded. He knew the best set of printers from which one could choose […]
Robert Mann
Over the years, at MIT, I found that especially the more seasoned faculty members were always more open for discussion. One did not have to be enrolled in their classes. While Professor Edgerton was always available for a lively chat or the openness with which he showed his photographic work or provided descriptions of his […]
Charles Ives
One of my early discoveries was the musical work of Charles Ives (1874–1954), an American modernist composer of classical music. Oliver (Howie) Kline was a young designer who was hired by our office. He came from a family of opera and music performers, took me to some of the premiere performances of Ives’ work at […]
Childhood Reflections
At the beginning of every festival season, in winter, there is a lot of loneliness surging up in me, no matter how hard I try to cover it up. I felt always abandoned, from childhood on, especially by my parents – my mother died early and left me unprotected to life; my father always felt, […]