Back to What's Happening with Paul Rudolph's Yale Restoration

We've shifted back and forth over the past few weeks between the renovations being made to Paul Rudolph's Art and Architecture Building on Yale's campus and the desperate plea to save the architect's Riverview High School down in Florida. Now that the latter has come to an unfortunate end, we thought we'd check in on what's going on over at the building which is sure to stay up. Luckily, we found The Sun's James Gardner offering up a whole slew of details on the project to give Rudolph's most creation a nice polish and some extra features, all on the path to get it ready to open come November 9th. It's a piece that's heavily focused on Rudolph himself, which is always a good thing, given how much people either love him or hate him (same with his buildings, too). Here's a bit: When it reopens on November 9, the original building will be officially renamed Paul Rudolph Hall, in honor of the charismatic figure who not only designed it, but ran the entire school as his personal fiefdom between 1958 and 1964. Rudolph was the sort of polarizing figure who, both in his pedagogy and in his practice, inspired an equal measure of devotion and ill will. Even today the building remains obviously and instantly controversial. But 45 years ago, at its inauguration, it possessed the fury of a polemic. A sullen gray megalith fashioned out of corduroy concrete, this bully of a building was perhaps the first on our continent to introduce the more subjective, Brutalist aesthetic that Le Corbusier had developed in the postwar period. To a culture that, for two decades, had been fed a mortifying diet of glass and steel, the abrupt intrusion of so much raw emotion was a shock to the system.

Fishbowl

Back to What's Happening with Paul Rudolph's Yale Restoration

Steve Delahoyde

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Steve Delahoyde