Paul Rudolph’s Construction: Material and Space

Abstract

Paul Rudolph (1918–1997) developed his American work from the beginning of his career in the late forties until the seventies, when he concluded a period of great constructive experimentation. During a first stage in Sarasota, Florida, characterized by single-family houses of great constructive clarity and structural refinement, he rehearsed and combined light materials implemented at the Brooklyn Navy Yards during World War II. Between 1955 and 1960, he designed larger-scale works based on prefabricated concrete, with the control of spatial and functional systems. In this period, the versatility of brise soleils at the Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley College (Massachusetts, 1955–1958) and the Sarasota High School (Florida, 1958–1960) and the symbolic character of pillars at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Insurance Building (Massachusetts, 1957–1960) and the Yale University’s Greeley Memorial Laboratory (Connecticut, 1957–1959) are remarkable. This approach led in 1960 to a search for the structural expression in large-scale concrete buildings, which allowed Rudolph to define the presence of the material and the spatial complexity in a unitary way. He challenged the functionalism and universalism of the International Style considering concrete surfaces with wooden or corrugated finish at the Temple Street Parking Garage (New Haven, 1958–1963) or at the Yale University Arts and Architecture Building (New Haven, 1958–1963). Rudolph used the material as a way of research through drawing and construction to define his particular modernist lexicon.