The Critics' Circle

"It’s hard to think of a building that has suffered through more indignities than the Yale School of Art and Architecture," begins Nicolai Ourossoff of the newly unveiled restoration of Rudolph's masterwork A&A building in New Haven and its addition by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates.

The A&A is in top form, Ourossoff writes. Half a century later, its inclusion in the canon of Modernist greats is secure, and Yale should be lauded for choosing this route over the Big D.

And what of the addition? Enthusiasm dims...

A parallel opinion is offered by Stephen Kobasa in the New Haven Advocate, expressed perhaps a bit more belligerently and solidified in the article's title "Demolition by Design" (I guess in his view, the Big D is also a metaphoric event).

We at the Foundation are grateful to Yale for the investment they have made to the A&A's rehabilitation and understand that an addition was necessary to bring it up to speed with the demands of a 21st century academic program. We're vexed, however, by the intentions of the design team.

"Paprika" makes a comeback at Yale A&A

With school starting in a week Yale's got a temporary Certificate of Occupancy for the third floor administrative spaces, and the arts library has been unpacking since last week.

The Foundation has this sneak peek of the newly re-installed paprika - "saffron" colored carpet which is ubiquitous in the soon to be re-named Paul Rudolph Hall.



When an original patch was salvaged once a partition was removed during the renovation, the carpet was cleaned and a match re-woven in 1960's goodness.



Initial reports to the Foundation show other floors fared well with minimal ADA invasions. The second floor gallery was the worst hit with a temporary floor sealing off raked seating, but the good news is that it's reversible.

If anyone has other early photos, please drop them in our flickr pool, and keep checking back for updates of the interior throughout the week.

Architect finds a bit of home in Singapore

“What struck me about these buildings was the blatant use of ideas developed in Rudolph’s early projects in Florida."

So writes Joyce Owens, after a trip to Singapore, a reporter we reached out to after she wrote an article in the Fort Myers News-Press about a Paul Rudolph house discovered in Fort Myers.

Joyce has returned from her trip to Asia and talks about her visits to the Colonnade and the Concourse in her most recent article. (Blogger's note - Joyce we are so jealous!)

You can find a photo gallery of images from her trip here.

Joyce has mentioned a future trip to New York City and we look forward to meeting her at the Paul Rudolph Foundation in the near future.

MoMA Show Includes Rudolph Designed Housing

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has opened a show about prefabricated housing and includes the Oriental Gardens project by Paul Rudolph for New Haven, Connecticut in the late 60's. The show opened July 20th and runs until October 20th, 2008.

"Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling comprises a survey of the history of the prefabricated home and a building project of five contemporary prefabricated houses in the museum's Fifty-fourth Street lot. Overall, the exhibition attests to the diversity of procedural, formal, and technological innovation in prefabricated architecture, and illustrates that the prefabricated house is a critical agent in architectural invention, material and formal research, and sustainability."

For more information about the show, including directions, you can go to the museum's website here.