Art & Architecture
The following essay was written by Tony Monk and appears in his publication The Art and Architecture of Paul Rudolph. The Paul Rudolph Foundation is grateful to Mr. Monk, who studied with Rudolph at Yale University, for permission to reproduce his work on this website.
PAUL RUDOLPH: THE COMMITTED LATE-MODERNIST
Background, Contemporaries and Training
His own background and training had of course a profound influence on his professional development and on the formulation of his natural design talents. He was born in Elkton, Kentucky, in 1918 the son of a southern Methodist minister and obtained a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Alabama Polytechnic Institute, studying there from 1935 to 1940. This degree was however not sufficient for him. Although inherently shy with a persuasive charm, he was always highly motivated with a burning ambition to succeed.
It was significant that he only ever contemplated completing his studies with the great teachers of his time. In the 1940s the choices for an advanced architectural education were either with Walter Gropius at Harvard, Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesen or Mies Van der Rohe at Chicago. All were eminent practitioners in their own right, who already had distinguished careers and were able to lead by example, Mies had a strong constrained design principle, ‘less (or Mies) is more’ and expected students to emulate his ideas, Wright was the greatest American architect alive producing powerful romantic masterpieces. He operated an apprentice system at Taliesen, east and then west. Students lived at the school and worked at gardening, building and cleaning to subsidize their keep and their education. Wright so dominated his students that Rudolph thought he would not get an education from him but an indoctrination.
Rudolph’s reticence and design talent made him think he would flourish better under Walter Gropius who ‘did not want to produce little Gropiuses’ but said ‘you must talk about principles’. Rudolph had a high regard for his teaching:”He was a truly great teacher, a theorist, an entrepreneur. He was so articulate always focused, very approachable. He was not a good architect but as an educator he was unsurpassed.” (1)
What is a good educator anyway? Rudolph taught in an entirely different way from Gropius. Rudolph was a comparatively quiet teacher but his architecture and drawings made such powerful statements that his students, hungry to learn, were captivated. They were well educated by the visual eloquence of these designs, and could therefore understand the supporting philosophy.
Rudolph arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1941 but after only six months was drafted into the Navy to take part in the Second World War, during which time he saw much of the world and acquired his all-American crew cut. He returned after the end of the war and was seceded again for his talent and application into the master’s class at Harvard. The university was at that time a hotbed of intellectual activity generated by several European refugees who had been at the Bauhaus and felt it necessary to flee potential German oppression. Harvard was therefore the exciting place to be. It had a clear program, Architectural Modernism was the theme led by Walter Gropius as its head. Marcel Breuer, Martin Wagner and IM Pei were all helping to forge a new design culture attempting to ‘solve today’s problems with today’s solutions’. These devotees brought to America a new zeal and rejuvenated the original Bauhaus principles. This philosophy was translated into a desire to create a fusion between industry and architecture by using modern materials and structures, The new Modernism still sought the ultimate design objective of combining high-quality craftsmanship with the engineering techniques of mass production.
This was the new order. It was the atmosphere in which the young and talented Paul Rudolph received his architectural education, along with such contemporaries as Ed Barnes, Bob Geddes, Ulrich Franzen, Harry Seidler, Harry Cobb and John Johansen. It is interesting that many of 