School Notes: School of Architecture
January/February 2010

Professorship honors late architect

A newly established professorship at the architecture school will be an enduring legacy in the name of architect Charles Gwathmey ’62MArch, who died last August. Gwathmey was celebrated for the geometrically complex and meticulously detailed buildings he designed in a Modernist style, and was identified along with other architects as a champion of High Modernism. His long list of acclaimed designs includes a number of private homes as well as institutional projects such as the additions to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge. His design for the recently completed Yale arts complex encompassed the restoration and expansion of the Art & Architecture Building (now Paul Rudolph Hall), the Jeffrey C. Loria Center for the History of Art, and the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library.

“The Charles Gwathmey professorship acknowledges the contributions Charles made as an architect, as well as his unique abilities as an educator to motivate young people,” said designer Ralph Lauren, who along with his wife, Ricky, established the professorship at the school. The Laurens were close friends of the architect. Peter Eisenman, the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design, has been named the first Charles Gwathmey Professor.

Visiting professorship will attract distinguished faculty

A visiting professorship in the name of Pritzker Prize laureate Norman Foster ’62MArch will bring prominent architects and designers to the school to lead advanced studios and expose students to the latest cross-currents of ideas in current architectural practice. The Norman R. Foster Visiting Professorship is supported by a gift from the architect and his family; Foster credits his time at Yale and “in particular Paul Rudolph, Serge Chermayeff, and Vincent Scully,” as having an “incredible impact” on his life. The first Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor will be Alejandro Zaera-Polo, theorist, architect, and co-founder of London-based Foreign Office Architects (FOA).