Paul Rudolph (1917-1997) is what you might call an acquired taste. While the modernist architect dabbled in international-style beach houses, luxurious townhouses, and bewildering buildings, he is best known for his brutalist buildings, many of which have been on the losing end of historic preservation debates. One person’s property is simply another’s stamp of approval.
On my visit Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolphnew exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first major museum retrospective of the architect, this divide was reflected in a few comments I heard in the gallery. “He was a real genius—understood and underappreciated,” one woman told a friend while watching footage of Hollywood plays that were filmed or had designs inspired by Rudolph’s properties, including Wes Anderson’s 2001 film. Residences at the Royal Tenenbaums and Disney+ series Loki. While watching the scene, one visitor said, “Prison, perfect.”
Abraham Thomas, the Met’s director of architecture, design, and decoration, says these mixed feelings about Rudolph’s work make revisiting his work all the more satisfying. Thomas says: “He has always treated me like an enigma. Rudolph had a meteoric rise in the world of architecture (he appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in 1967 and became dean of the Yale School of Architecture before he was 40), before disappearing from the North American architectural scene later in his career, spending his final years building in Southeast Asia.
But where the exhibit is most successful is welcoming us to his intricately crafted hand paintings, some of which are 6 and a half feet tall, while others are over 4 feet wide. Thomas says the exhibition was “partly about having the opportunity to show these paintings in the flesh for the first time.”
Who is Paul Rudolph?
Throughout his career, Rudolph was ambitious. Born in Kentucky, he attended what is now Auburn University before moving on to the Harvard Graduate School of Design. After serving briefly in the army during World War II, he used new materials used in the repair of warships, such as plastic and plywood, in the construction of buildings. His first commissions were in Florida, where he developed the Sarasota modern style—think white, boxy, open houses with large windows and deep eaves. He designed affordable housing developments, government buildings, university buildings—everything from “Christmas lights to skyscrapers,” as he once said.
Rudolph was first celebrated in the press (one critic speculated that his friendship with the editors saved him from harsh reviews) and kept his habit of discussing the events of the day. Collaborating with Robert Moses’ vision for the Lower Manhattan Expressway, he proposed turning the freeway into a continuous complex of apartments built on top of a closed road. If it was going to happen, he thought, it might as well make it good. But by the late 1960s, Rudolph was falling out of style as postmodernists came into the picture and positioned him as the epitome of modern failure.
For the past 15 years or so, there has been constant reflection on Rudolph’s work. After his death in 1997, obituaries focused on the “strange” nature of his work, and more students and architecture scholars became interested in learning about all aspects of his work, leading to a renewed appreciation of it.
“I’m not sure there has ever been an architect whose work was as fascinating, beautiful, exciting, and terrifying as Paul Rudolph,” critic Paul Goldberger wrote in the book. The New Yorker in the 2010 revision of the mini-exhibition at Cooper Union. The Rudolph Renaissance also included an exhibit at the Architecture Center, a scholarly book by historian Timothy Rohan, and a photo book of homes designed by Rudolph on the eve of their demolition (which have become collectors’ items). In 2023, Rudolph’s Modulightor building became the first New York City landmark to acknowledge the artist’s LGBTQ+ identity.
Revival of architecture
Now, amid the rise of AI-generated imagery and the ease of rendering, Rudolph’s painstaking drawings find themselves at the center of a conversation about how architecture represents itself. There is a renewed interest in visual media within contemporary architecture. To wit: SoHo print shop and architecture gallery a83 opened the third exhibition in a series of architectural exhibitions, coincidentally, just four days after the Rudolph study.
Rudolph’s drawings of his projects were a hit with the design press when he drew them and have continued to draw audiences ever since. Many of them are now held at the Library of Congress and have not been publicly displayed.
“It’s hard not to love these paintings,” said Thomas. “I think when people see their potential, I think it can be an interesting question about the role of painting within architecture education or even within the architectural process in general.”
Rudolph always held a pen when it came to his drawings. It is rare for a principal of an architectural firm to do this. Just as much of Rudolph’s work can be considered a “cautionary essay,” as Thomas explains, so can the paintings. Thomas wonders how Rudolph’s job would have been different if he had been able to delegate this job to someone else.
“You often read these stories about him being a difficult composer to work with,” said Thomas. “Many of his students used to describe him as cruel, but also brilliant and the most important influence they ever had in their work. I think he also refused to play this game. As architectural practices became big business in the ’70s and ’80s, people like Philip Johnston and IM Pei had partners and were happy to share the subject with other architects. And Rudolph, of course, never did. He always ran the office like an atelier, as if he were at Yale running a studio with students. There’s a limit to how much product you can have if they’re very involved in the customer service.”
That said, architecture watchers today are lucky that Rudolph never passed the pen as we can now appreciate them as originals, especially since the buildings themselves were never built or lost. Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until March 16, 2025.
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