Yale Bulletin
and Calendar

November 2-9, 1998Volume 27, Number 11


























Renowned architects will lead studio classes during the spring semester

The School of Architecture will host four renowned architects as visiting professors during the spring semester, according to an announcement by Architecture Dean Robert A.M. Stern.

Philip Johnson will be the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design; Hendrik (Hank) Koning and Julie Eizenberg will jointly hold the William Henry Bishop Visiting Professorship of Architectural Design; and Charles Gwathmey will be the William B. and Charlotte Shepherd Davenport Visiting Professr of Architectural Design.

"These distinguished visitors reflect Yale's traditional character of open discourse and opposing points of view," says Stern. "It is part of a grand conversation across time, across ideologies and ideals. Yale has always been -- and continues to be -- the most open and exciting place for architectural inquiry. That is because we do not have just one belief about what architecture is: we search in all
directions."

Each architect will teach a studio course for Yale architecture students and present a talk as part of the school's spring public lecture series. Information on that series will appear in a future issue of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar.

Philip Johnson. At age 92, Johnson has been described as "the elder statesman of American architecture" due to his prominent role in the field as an architect, critic and curator for more than half a century. He has earned the profession's highest awards, and his work has encompassed every major 20th-century architectural movement. Since 1932, he has held key positions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he was founding director of the department of architecture and design. His best-known works include the Glass House complex in New Canaan, Connecticut, the Seagram Building (with Mies van der Rohe), the Museum for Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks, the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, the Fort Worth Water Garden and the AT&T Corporate Headquarters. Still active, this year Johnson created a design that introduced a new technology for integrating images into the facade of a skyscraper.

Johnson will lead a student class titled "A New Building for the Yale School of Architecture." As a teaching assistant, he will have the services of noted architect Peter Eisenman. Eisenman is the founding director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York and author of "House X" and "Houses of Cards."

Hendrik Koning and Julie Eizenberg. Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Inc. was established in 1981 in California as a woman-owned firm. The company has become known for its imaginative, site-specific and people-oriented design approach. The architects' concerns include historic contexts, sustainable environments and socially-oriented projects. The firm designed the Simone Hotel, the first new single-room occupancy hotel on "Skid Row" in Los Angeles in more than 30 years, and provided a master plan for the historic Farmers Market, which won the Westside Urban Forum Prize for Urban Design in 1991. Koning Eizenberg Architecture has achieved recognition for its groundbreaking work in housing and community-based projects, receiving the Progressive Architecture First Award in 1987 for affordable housing in Santa Monica, and the National AIA Honor Awards for the Simone Hotel and the 31st Street House.

The studio Koning and Eizenberg will lead is titled "A School Near the Beach," referring to a new middle school that will be designed in Santa Monica.

Charles Gwathmey. A Yale alumnus, Gwathmey earned his Master of Architecture degree from Yale in 1962, winning the William Wirt Winchester Fellowship as the outstanding graduate. Among his best known buildings are the Gwathmey residence in Amagansett, N.Y., the Cogan residence in East Hampton, N.Y., the SUNY Purchase dormitory and the addition to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. His honors include the Brunner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (to which he was elected in 1976), a Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Lifetime Achievement Medal in Visual Arts from the Guild Hall Academy of Arts, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York State Society of Architects. In 1985 he received the first Yale Alumni Arts Award from the School of Architecture.

Teaching with Gwathmey will be Deborah Berke, associate professor (adjunct) at the School of Architecture. Berke is the architect of the new building of the School of Art. The Gwathmey/Berke studio is titled "The Museum of Post-War Material Culture in Levittown, Long Island."