Paul Rudolph, Perspective rendering of vertical housing elements at the approach to the Williamsburg Bridge, 1970, brown ink on paper, 29 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the Paul Rudolph Archive, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The Drawing Center presents Paul Rudolph: Lower Manhattan Expressway, organized in collaboration with the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union. Approximately 30 full-scale reproductions of drawings, prints, and photographs dated from 1967–72 are on public view for the first time in the Houghton Gallery at the Cooper Union. These works from the Paul Rudolph Archive at the Library of Congress are shown together with a reconstruction of Rudolph's model of the LME project created by architecture students at the Cooper Union in conjunction with Rawlings Architects PC. Presenting the only records of Rudolph's visionary proposal, this exhibition illuminates Rudolph's unique approach to architectural drawing and highlighted the fundamental importance of drawing in his overall practice.
Ed Rawlings, cocurator, is an architect who has worked in New York for the last 22 years. A graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he has led several award-winning projects, including Dance Theater Workshop, the Roosevelt Island School, and the pedestrian walkway canopies at Newark Liberty International Airport. In the fall of 2005, Rawlings Architects PC received a New York City–AIA Housing Design Award for the Dance Building in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. The firm's recently completed hotel project Thompson LES was published in 101 Cool Buildings: The Best of NYC Architecture 1999–2009 in October 2009.
Paul Rudolph (b. 1918, Elkton, Kentucky; d. 1997, New York) studied architecture at Alabama Polytechnic Institute at Auburn (now Auburn University), graduating in 1940. He continued his studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, earning his degree in 1947 after serving in the Navy from 1943 to 1946. After completing his degree, Rudolph moved to Sarasota, Florida, establishing his own firm in 1952, and remaining there until 1957. He was the Dean of the School of Architecture at Yale University from 1957–65. In 1965, Rudolph left his teaching post and established his office in New York City. Rudolph completed numerous residential, governmental, and cultural projects during his career, notably the Jewitt Arts Center at Wellesley College (1955) and the Art and Architecture Building at Yale University (1958).
Jim Walrod, cocurator,is a self-taught interior designer who began his career at the age of 16 as an assistant to the design director of Fiorucci in Manhattan. He went on to open a series of influential furniture and design stores in the same city, including Form and Function with partners Fred Schneider (of the B-52's) and Jack Feldman. Walrod's collaboration with Andre Balazs resulted in the Standard Downtown hotel in Los Angeles. His more recent design work includes the Park restaurant; Colors restaurant (operated by the former employees of the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Center); Steven Alan Annex stores; and Gild Hall and Thompson LES hotels in New York for the Thompson Hotel Group. Walrod has consulted on interiors for architects Jean Nouvel and Richard Gluckman, in addition to independently designing numerous private residences.
The Drawing Center is the only fine-arts institution in the United States to focus solely on the exhibition of drawings, both contemporary and historical. It was established in 1977 to provide opportunities and services for emerging and under-recognized artists; to demonstrate the significance and diversity of drawings throughout history; and to stimulate public dialogue on issues of art and culture.