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MANILA, Philippines - Who is the American architect who helped shape the way that architects, planners, and students think about architecture and the American built environment?

He is known for coining the phrase “Less is a bore,” an antidote to Mies van der Rohe’s famous “less is more.”

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1925, and

graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1947, where he also received a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1950.

After furthering his studies as a Rome Prize Fellow at the

American Academy in the 1950s, he returned to the US where he taught an architectural theory course at the University of Pennsylvania.  His early professional work was in the office of Eero Saarinen, where he worked on the design of the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center, and Louis I Kahn.

He founded his own practice in 1958, first with John Ruasch, and then with his wife, Denise Scott Brown.  One of his first projects that captured the attention of the architectural community was a house for his mother in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.  In 1989, it received the American Institute of Architecture’s Twenty Five Year Award as a design of “enduring significance that withstood the test of time.”

Described as one of the most original talents in American architecture, he has helped redirect American architecture from a widely practiced, often banal modernism in the 1960s to a more modern, exploratory and ultimately eclectic design approach that openly drew lessons from historic architecture and responded to the context of the American city.

This “inclusive” approach contrasted with the typical modernist to resolve and unify all factors in a complete, rigidly structured — and possibly less functional and simplistic — work of art.

The diverse range of buildings of his early career offered surprising alternatives to then current architectural practice with “impure” forms such as the North Penn Visiting Nurses Headquarters, the Vanna Venturi House (casual symmetries), and the Loeb House (pop style super-graphics and geometries).

Some of his important works include the Trubek House in

Massachusetts, 1972; the Brant House in Connecticut, 1973; the Allen Art Museum in Ohio; a house in Tuckers Town Bermuda, 1975; Tucker House in New York, 1975; Gordon Wu Hall in Princeton, 1983; and a bank building in Florida, 1994.

He is best known, however, for the groundbreaking books he wrote in collaboration with his wife Denise.  These include Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, where he challenged modernism and celebrated the mix of historical styles in great cities like Rome.  Learning from Las Vegas, published in 1982, is a postmodern classic that calls the vulgar billboards of the Las Vegas Strip emblems for a new architecture.

He was won numerous awards for his work, including the AIA Firm Award in 1985; the AIA Medal of Distinction by the Pennsylvania Society of Architects in 1990; the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1991; and the National Medal of Arts, a US Presidential Award in 1992.

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Last week’s question: Who is the Chicago-based chef who is known as a living culinary and philanthropic legend, and was one of only five heroes honored by President George W. Bush and Colin Powell for his work in America’s Promise Charity?

Answer: Çharlie Trotter

Winner: Joella Abando of Paranaque City

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Text your answer to 0926-3508061 with your name and address. One winner will be chosen through a raffle of texts with the correct answer. The winner will receive P2,000 worth of SM gift certificates for use at Our Home, SM Department Store, or SM Supermarket. They can claim their prize at Our Home in SM Megamall. Call Roma Cortes or Apple Caballes at 634-1951, 634-1952.Bring photocopies of two valid IDs and a clipping of the Design Quiz issue in which you appear as winner.