BIOGRAFIAS

Stirling (1926-1992), Arquiteto inglês:

NEW YORK, April 15: British architect James Stirling was named as the winner of the third annual international Pritzker Architecture Prize at a press conference held at New York's Museum of Modern Art. In making the announcement, Jay A. Pritzker, president of the Hyatt Foundation, which administers and funds the prize , presented the 55-year-old Stirling with a check for $100,000. The second award element, a cast of a Henry Moore sculpture created especically for the purpose, will be presented at a Washington banquet next month.

Stirling, a Scottish-born architect whose work includes museums, educational institutions and private residences, was the 1980 recipient of the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, presented by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Among his current and upcoming projects are buildings for the Fogg Museum, Cambridge, and Columbia University, New York, as well as the new Turner Museum at London's Tate Gallery.

In a development in Fukuoka, Japan, his Nexus Housing is a project consisting of 24 individual houses, each three stories high. Koolhaas also has projects in Portugal, Korea and Germany, the latter being a new embassy for the Netherlands in Berlin, which is currently under construction.

The first Pritzker Architecture Prize was presented in 1979 to Philip Johnson of the United States, and the second, i n 1980, was awarded to Mexico's Luis Barragan. Stirling was chosen to receive the 1981 Prize by a distinguished international jury: J. Carter Brown, Director, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Lord Clark of Saltwood (Kenneth Clark), author and art historian; Arata Isozaki, architect and critic; Philip Johnson, architect and 1979 Pritzker Laureate; J. Irwin Miller, chairman, executive committee, Cumins Engine Company, and architecture patron; and Cesar Pelli, architect and Dean of the School of Archiecture, Yale University.

In announcing the Prize, Mr. Pritzker quoted from a statement by 1979 Laureate Philip Johnson: "James Stirling has been the Wunderkind of modern architecture for some twenty years. Today he is a mature leader of world architecture.

"He is probably best known for a series of un built competitive projects culminating today in two great buildings actually under construction in Germany: a Museum in Stuttgart and a Scientific Institute in Berlin, and three in the United States.

"His work began at a time when the Modern Movement was still in ascendance and his variations, angles, details in the style were extraordinarily original. Today he is in the vanguard of the newer movement, which includes historic allusion and contextural consideration.

Scharoun, Hans (1893-1972), Arquiteto alemão:

One critic castigated the Kulturforum, an ensemble of galleries, museums and concert halls in the western part of Berlin, as an arcadia in the heart of Berlin, and in doing so he spoke the truth. In fact it was there that Hans Scharoun made his call (first expressed in the early nineteen-twenties) for contemporary sites for the community and city landmarks to be created, to guide the consciousness of the citizens. Pride of place was to be given to a building dedicated to the arts, and in truth the resulting Philharmonie was to become his masterpiece.

Hans Scharoun was born in Bremen on 20 September 1893, grew up in nearby Bremerhaven and studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule Berlin between 1912 and 1914. Following World War I, he worked as a freelance architect in Insterburg, East Prussia (now Chernachovsk, Russian Federation) until 1925, before taking up teaching at Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) and finally returning to Berlin as a freelance architect in 1932. In Berlin he was also to hold the Chair of Urban Development at the Technische Universität from 1946 to 1958. During this period he organised colloquia on urban development at the Technische Universität, which found a great resonance, and he considered it important that his institute be both a teaching and research institution, allowing students to take part in practical as well as research tasks.

In the midst of the dawning Neues Bauen (New Building) movement during the nineteen-twenties, Scharoun had begun to discover his own style, and under the influence of Hugo Häring found his way to the school of organic building. Like Häring, he stressed that a "supportive idea" had to be present in order to determine a building's design. According to Scharoun, this idea did not just consist of a mere fulfilment of a purpose - on the contrary, it comprised an externally rigid, mechanical principle. There had to be, so to speak, a living building, developing within itself and with an internal legitimacy.

The Kulturforum is a well-known example of this architecture. When music is heard unexpectedly, people join up to form a circle. Even though this is a particularly unpretentious observation, it was the principle that inspired Scharoun to design a Philharmonie that could not have been simpler or more ingenious. He transposed this process into a concert hall and let the music form its heart - both spatially and optically. The audience is arranged concentrically around the podium where the musicians stand, and revitalized sounds emanate upwards as if from a fountain of youth, thanks to acoustic features never encountered before.

Opposite the Philharmonie is the new Staatsbibliothek (state library) building, only completed after Scharoun's death. While the Berlin Wall still stood, a larger second building was needed. But, always the visionary, Hans Scharoun designed a library for a future Berlin without a Wall. However, during his lifetime, an authority gained overall supervision and halved the amount of space available to readers planned originally. Despite further major intrusions, the idea of a reader-oriented library at least still survived: there were no hampering courthouse-style staircases full of intimidating steps and no dismal heavy doors demarcating tightly enclosed areas. Instead, readers glide through the vast reading room, and another broad hall (itself expanding into harmony) lets visitors softly glide into the bright peace and quiet. The spirit is free, like the wings of heaven.

Rudolph, Paul (1918-1997), Arquiteto norte-americano:

Laboratório ENDO (1965), Garden City, New Jersey;
Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Yale (1960);
Manhattan Bridge e Willianburg Bridge (1980), EUA.

"Architecture is a personal effort, and the fewer people coming between you and your work the better. This keeps some people from practicing architecture...If an architect cares enough, and practices architecture as an art, then he must initiate design; he must create rather than make judgments." -- Paul Rudolph (1918-1997)

Paul Rudolph was the architect responsible for UMass Dartmouth’s original master plan and the design of most of the buildings on campus.

Born in 1918 in Elkton, Kentucky, Rudolph graduated from the Alabama Polytechnic Institute in 1940 and in 1941 began advanced studies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. His studies were interrupted by World War II and three years of service in the U.S. Navy. After the war, Rudolph returned to Harvard, where he studied with renowned architect Walter Gropius. After a decade of success designing private residences primarily in the South, Rudolph began to receive commissions for larger public projects and in 1958 was named chairman of the department of architecture at Yale University. It was here that he designed one of his most famous works, the Art and Architecture Building, which was completed in 1963.

Rudolph left Yale in 1965 to open his own firm, continuing to design inventive and original buildings for both the public and private sectors. Like many architects of the period, he believed that urban design could contribute to social reform.

Rudolph’s work exhibits a highly personal and uncompromising style, and his buildings are designed to excite and challenge its occupants. The strong vertical striations are obtained with either ribbed-block or ribbed wood forms. Lively and rugged, his buildings are often made from exposed concrete surfaces. The rough texture is achieved by hammering away at the poured concrete to expose the inner aggregate. The interiors are dynamic, playing with light and shadow, drama and abstraction. Beams slide past vertical supports; walls are de-emphasized. Built-in furnishings enhance and divide the spaces.