Photo by John Brooke, courtesy Irene Jenks Charismatic, daring, artistic. We don’t always associate these qualities with structural engineers, but the highly esteemed Bill LeMessurier, who passed away June 14 at the age of 81, embodied all of them. Trained as an architect at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, LeMessurier graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a master’s degree in building engineering and construction in 1953—“then all his [Harvard] classmates hired him,” remembers his wife, Dorothy, who married him the same year. Indeed, since LeMessurier started his eponymous practice in 1961, he distinguished himself with a
Margaret Helfand, FAIA, died June 20 at the age of 59. Her death was due to colon cancer. Since she opened her office in 1981, Helfand had created a body of work distinguished for its clean, Modernist vocabulary and skillful use of natural materials, combined with a quiet and subtle inventiveness. Her commitment to the craft of construction, the exploration of materials of varying textures, as well as her attention to details, set Helfand apart from a number of her colleagues. Photo: Courtesy Helfand Architecture Margaret Helfand Except for a brief partnership, Helfand practiced on her own and gradually broke
Richärd + Bauer, a young Phoenix-based firm, has demonstrated numerous times in its 11-year history that it can still advance architectural quality in inexpensive institutional buildings.
The more successful buildings by Rafael Viñoly, FAIA, display distinct athletic gestures—from the smoothly arcing roof of the 1994 Lehman College Physical Education Facility in New York to the exuberant, glass-barrel-vaulted roof of the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts in Philadelphia.
The downtown boutique aesthetic that emerged in New York City’s SoHo loft district in the late 1970s caught on––and stuck around––largely because it showed off arty clothes to striking effect.
Credit: a sticky wicket Credits can be a source of contention, and it is more than wise to clarify them from the beginning. But even then there are problems. When Margaret Helfand, FAIA , a New York–based architect with her own office took on the role as the design architect for the Unified Science Center at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, Einhorn Yaffee Prescott (EYP), a Boston-based a/e firm, had already been contracted to do the programming, and because of its expertise in lab design, had embarked on some early planning for the center. The college, for which Helfand had
Embedding architects Electronic mail may help in overseas working relationships, but it isn’t everything: design architects and their collaborating architects often place their respective staffs in each other’s offices during the phases of schematic design, design development, construction documentation, and construction supervision. Gruzen Samton, which associated with Bernard Tschumi, AIA (then dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning), for Columbia’s Lerner Hall [record, November 1999, page 94], sent architects to Tschumi’s office at the beginning of the schematic-design phase. “We were all looking at various alternatives, with lots of sketches,” says Samton. “Bernard had a lot