Charles Willard Moore (October 31, 1925 – December 16, 1993) was an American architect, educator, writer, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991. He is often labeled as the father of postmodernism. His work as an educator was important to a generation of American architects who read his books or studied with him at one of the several universities where he taught. Education Moore graduated from the University of Michigan in 1947, where he was one of the top students in his class. After graduating, he worked for several years as an architect, served in the Army, and studied with Professor Jean Labatut at Princeton University, where he earned a master's degree and a PhD (1957). He remained for an additional year as a post-doctoral fellow, and as a teaching assistant to the architect Louis Kahn, who was teaching a design studio. While at Princeton, he met and befriended the architect Robert Venturi. While at Princeton, Moore developed relationships with fellow students Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull, Jr., Richard Peters, and Hugh Hardy. All remained lifelong friends and adherents to a view of architecture as a joyful, humanistic, pursuit that promised to make people happier and healthier. During his Princeton years, Moore designed and built a house for his mother in Pebble Beach, California, and worked during the summers for architect Wallace Holm of neighboring Monterey. Moore's Master's thesis explored ways to preserve and integrate Monterey's historic adobe dwellings into the fabric of the city. His Doctoral dissertation, "Water and Architecture", was a study of the importance of water in shaping the experience of place. The dissertation is significant for being one of the first pieces of architectural scholarship to draw from the work of Gaston Bachelard. Moore used some of the material in his later book, The Poetics of Gardens. Career In 1959, Moore left Princeton to take a teaching position at the University of California, Berkeley. There he teamed with Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull, Jr. and Richard Whittaker to form a new and influential firm: MLTW. They were among the first American architects to favor contextual designs—fitting well with the urban fabric of San Francisco—over harsh Modernist buildings that were alien to the texture of the city. When hired to design an innovative, environmentally sensitive condominium complex on the north coast, they applied some of their sensitivity to "place" to