I am an architect, and I am passionate about my work. Well before I became an architect I was a sculptor. Making sculpture has always been my avocation. For me, the design process in both architecture and sculpture is identical. I consider my buildings to be light-sensitive sculpture and my sculpture, scaleless architecture.
I began making sculpture when I was very young. My mother, a painter, was for many years the Director of the Pittsburgh Plan for Art, then the city's only legitimate gallery. I grew up in the art world. I considered, briefly, becoming a full-time sculptor, but realized how difficult it might be to sustain myself. Architecture was the perfect fit, providing a wonderful outlet for my creative energy. I earned Masters degrees from Columbia School of Architecture in New York and Cambridge School of Architecture in England. I apprenticed first with Marcel Breuer then with Paul Rudolph, and opened my own practice in New York in 1970. I became bi-coastal in 1986 with a satellite office in Santa Monica, and spent a lot of time on airplanes. I worked with my friend, Richard Meier, on the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. I developed properties with some of my New York clients. In 1995 I packed up both offices and moved to Bozeman, Montana, becoming one of the few Modernists in the state. Unlike the East Coast, here it was possible to build a building without first tearing one down!
In 2004 I was asked by another old friend to return to New York to work on the design of the Fulton Street Transit Center. Having recently completed his first project in China, he promised to help me find a major commission there. It took some time, but in 2005 I became the Chief Consultant for CTDI, Third Design Institute, Chongqing, working on some of the world's largest projects. I loved it. Were it not for the fact that Chongqing is in a state of continuous inversion where on most days one cannot see the sun, I might still be there. Six months later, after a bout with pneumonia, I returned to New York.
From late 2007 through 2010 I worked and lived in the Mid-East, first in Dubai and then, as the Chief Consultant of Al Rajhi Developments, in Cairo and Riyadh. Here the projects were even larger than in China: Mixed-use and New Towns, starting at 1,000,000 square feet! Sulamein Al Rajhi was the largest private developer in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; he is one of the world's wealthiest. While nothing can be taken for granted in Saudi Arabia, my experience there was extraordinary: fabulous work, wonderful friends and a princely lifestyle. Sadly, Sheik Sulamein stopped developing. After an unsuccessful search for work in the mid-East and Europe (it was the height of the recession) I returned to California and began the current chapter of my life.
Since the winter of 2010 I have been fulfilling a life-long dream, turning my avocation into my vocation. I am a full-time sculptor (and a part-time architectural consultant). Whereas in the past my work has always been carving and casting, the emergence of rapid image prototyping or 3D printing has opened a whole new world for me. I design sculpture on my computer with the same CAD program I use for architecture, and I restrict myself to making pieces that cannot easily be cast or carved. The technology is burgeoning. It is now possible to 'print' in color, with materiality and transparency. And, as was the case with my architecture, if I have seen it before, I have no interest in repeating it. I am fascinated with the precision of the process and the ability through rendering to visualize completed work while it is still in progress. And even though size is today limited to about one foot cubed, I am developing ways to snap together elements so that any size can be produced. It is easy to imagine these pieces scaled up many times. I am also working on packaging. Were you to purchase one of my sculptures, I hope you will be delighted as well with its container.
As of March 2014 I have published on this website 50 of the 60 pieces completed in the last three and one half years. Le Corbusier said, "Creation is a patient search." I am just beginning. Come along with me for the ride!