Paul Marvin Rudolph (October 23, 1918 – August 8, 1997) was an American architect and the chair of Yale University's Department of Architecture for six years, known for his use of reinforced concrete and highly complex floor plans. His most famous work is the Yale Art and Architecture Building (A&A Building), a spatially-complex Brutalist concrete structure. He is one of the modernist architects considered an early practitioner of the Sarasota School of Architecture. Early life, education, and personal life Paul Marvin Rudolph was born October 23, 1918 in Elkton, Kentucky. His father, Keener L. Rudolph, was an itinerant Methodist preacher, and through their travels the son was exposed to the architecture of the American South. His mother, Eurye (Stone) Rudolph, had artistic interests. Rudolph also showed early talent at painting and music. Rudolph earned his bachelor's degree in architecture at Auburn University (then known as Alabama Polytechnic Institute) in 1940, and then moved to the Harvard Graduate School of Design to study with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. After three years, he left to serve as an officer in the United States Naval Reserve at Brooklyn Navy Yard for three years during WWII, working on design and construction of merchant marine ships. He then resumed studies at Harvard, where his classmates included I.M. Pei and Philip Johnson. Rudolph was awarded his master's degree in 1947. Rudolph was gay. Work Sarasota, Florida Following his studies at Harvard, Rudolph moved to Sarasota, Florida, and partnered with Ralph Twitchell for four years, until he started his own practice in 1952. Rudolph's Sarasota time is now part of the period labeled Sarasota School of Architecture in his career. Notable for its appearance in the 1958 book Masters of Modern Architecture, the W. R. Healy Guest House – nicknamed "The Cocoon House" – was a one-story guest house built in 1950 on Siesta Key, Sarasota, Florida. The roof was concave and was constructed using a built-up spray-on process that Rudolph had seen used to cocoon disused ships during his time in the US Navy (hence, the house's nickname). In addition, Rudolph used jalousie windows, which enabled the characteristic breezes to and from Sarasota Bay to flow through the house. His first independent work, post Twitchell, was the Walker Guest House, a sparse exoskeleton structure built in the sand dunes and scrub of Sanibel Island in 1953. It was Rudolph's most clearly articulated and rigorously geometric residential