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MANILA, Philippines - Who is this architect who designed the prize-winning furniture in Organic Design in Home Furnishings in New York Musem?
He was born on June 17, 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri. By the time he was 14 years old, while attending Yeatman high school, he worked at the Laclede Steel Company as a part-time laborer, where he learned about engineering, drawing, and architecture.
He briefly studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis on an architecture scholarship. After two years of study, he left the university. Many sources claim that he was dismissed for his advocacy of Frank Lloyd Wright and his interest in modern architects. He was reportedly dismissed from the university because his views were “too modern.”
While a student, he also was employed as an architect at the firm of Trueblood and Graf. The demands on his time from this employment and from his classes, led to sleep-deprivation and diminished performance at the university.
While at Washington University, he met his first wife, Catherine Woermann, whom he married in 1929. A year later, they had a daughter, Lucia.
In 1930, he began his own architectural practice in St. Louis with partner Charles Gray. He was later joined by a third partner, Walter Pauley.
He was greatly influenced by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen (whose son Eero, also an architect, would become a partner and friend). At the elder Saarinen’s invitation, he moved in 1938 with his wife Catherine and daughter Lucia to Michigan, to further study architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he would become a teacher and head of the industrial design department. In order to apply for the Architecture and Urban Planning Program, he defined an area of focus—the St. Louis waterfront. Together with Eero Saarinen he designed prize-winning furniture for New York’s Museum of Modern Art “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” competition. Their work displayed the new technique of wood moulding (originally developed by Alvar Aalto), that he would further develop in many moulded plywood products, including, beside chairs and other furniture, splints and stretchers for the US Navy during World War II.
In 1941, he divorced and he married his Cranbrook colleague Ray Kaiser, who was born in Sacramento, California. He then moved with her to Los Angeles, California, where they would work and live for the rest of their lives.
In the late 1940s, as part of the Arts & Architecture magazine’s “Case Study” program, he and Ray designed and built a groundbreaking House, Case Study House #8, as their home. Located upon a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and hand-constructed within a matter of days entirely of pre-fabricated steel parts intended for industrial construction, it remains a milestone of modern architecture.
He died of a heart attack on August 21, 1978 while on a consulting trip in his native Saint Louis, and now has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
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Text your answer to 0915-1371538 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 the store manager at 634-1943. Bring photocopies of two valid IDs and a clipping of the Design Quiz issue in which you appear as winner.
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Last week’s question: Who is the Spanish chef whose Celler de Can Roca was voted the second best restaurant in the world and whose dishes and desserts are inspired by perfumes like Calvin Klein’s Eternity?
Answer: Joan Roca
Winner: Shiela B. Damayan of Rodriguez, Rizal
