wing interior spaces and graceful lines, which had matured his work sufficiently for him to be recognized as a natural successor to Frank Lloyd Wright in terms of housing design.
However, within his commercial success and the impressive portfolio of commissions were the seeds of his inherent weakness and ultimate professional demise. All these corporate schemes, including the high-rise apartments at Tracey Towers and the earlier Crawford Manor Housing, were designed and constructed using various forms of concrete, usually in-situ, sometimes precast or blocks. Rudolph, during this period in busy practice used concrete almost automatically for all his major projects, and became universally linked with concrete as it was the material material and gave infinite flexibility to create the dynamic sculptural forms, which were easily translated from Rudolph’s immaculate graphic presentations. When technical problems started to appear in his buildings and they started to suffer from concrete decay and water penetration, as occurred in so much other flat-roofed modern architecture built in concrete around the world, his direct association with this material became prejudicial to his reputation. The aesthetic character of this material was inherently cold and usually inhuman, even if it was disguised by the use of textured finishes and vibrant colors, which Rudolph often so cleverly employed. The use of natural concrete was of course unfriendly in housing and particularly in the high-density apartments, which especially needed to convey and accommodate social understanding and human characteristics. The elegant sculptural features of these residential towers could not address the public aversion to exposed concrete or the technical difficulties associated with its use. These factors all contributed to his demise and his work became unfashionable, over-taken by a wave of Postmodernism especially in America.
DECLINE AND REJUVENATION
The number of Paul Rudolph’s major commissions in America diminished rapidly during the 1970s, and his outstanding reputation suddenly declined. After a decade of prolific activity producing numerous and outstandingly important projects for eminent clients and of being one of America’s brightest young architects, it was difficult to understand why such a dramatic deterioration should have taken place. Rudolph himself jested that he was at one stage an up-and-coming architect with great potential and then quickly found himself as a supposed has-been who was out of fashion, and that he never therefore enjoyed the pleasure of actually having arrived.
There were probably three main reasons for Rudolph’s fall from favor. There was a sea change in the 1970s which saw the focus of architectural design switch to a new trend of Postmodernism which was radically different from Rudolph’s minimalist philosophy. This movement produced a whole new breed of designers who applied classical principles, ornamentation and symbolism to their projects. This was fundamentally abhorrent to Rudolph whose design instincts prevented him from accepting such a superficial approach to architecture and who therefore ignored and rejected this new style of design.
At the same time there was a universal and adverse reaction to the use of natural concrete as a finish to buildings both externally and internally. Not only was it an expensive surface to construct correctly without unsightly blemishes but it was also considered to be impersonal and unfriendly as an internal surface treatment. It quickly became drab and aesthetically unattractive. Even though Rudolph went to he would naturally prefer to use. This application was intellectually justified because it was a modern considerable lengths to develop specially textured finishes to deal with weathering and to cast interesting details in it, it was still considered to be too stridently robust even for public buildings and therefore quite unsuitable for use in housing schemes. Rudolph was of course identified as a leading exponent in the use of this type of material. The alienation of con