<h1>On Richard Meier's Eightieth Birthday</h1>
"White is the most beautiful color because in it you can see all the colors of the rainbow."
Today, an architect celebrates a significant life anniversary, whose buildings bear an unmistakable signature, even though he uses nothing but white volumes and large glass walls stemming from the aesthetics of interwar functionalism.
No one in Meier's family was an architect, yet they fully supported him in studying architecture at Cornell University. After school, Meier joined the giant corporation S.O.M., where he worked for six months under Gordon Bunshaft, before transitioning to the significantly smaller office of Marcel Breuer, which helped him when founding his own studio. His first independent project was commissioned by his parents, asking him to build them a house. Even the greatest architect must start somewhere. When he gains support from his closest ones and experiences from the best, then he finds it easier to succeed. More than half a century has passed since Meier founded his office. Today, his office competes with S.O.M. projects.
Richard Alan Meier, along with P. Eisenman, J. Hejduk, Ch. Gwathmey, and M. Graves was part of the so-called New York Five, who exhibited together at MoMA in the early 70s (Five Architects, 1972). Originally, it was a group of young intellectuals from the East Coast who aimed to programmatically turn towards the roots of functionalism and purism in Europe (named in 1932 the International Style by Americans H.R. Hitchcock and P. Johnson). While some of the original five later deviated towards deconstruction or postmodernism, Meier has persisted in his career with Le Corbusier's legacy and firmly adhered to his motto: "Architecture is a scientific, precise, and grand game of volumes concentrated under the sun." Throughout the past half-century, Meier has thrived with pure white volumes, which he formed into "a harmonic rhythm of planes, light, and shadow."
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Richard A. Meier on the occasion of receiving the Pritzker Prize in 1984
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No one in Meier's family was an architect, yet they fully supported him in studying architecture at Cornell University. After school, Meier joined the giant corporation S.O.M., where he worked for six months under Gordon Bunshaft, before transitioning to the significantly smaller office of Marcel Breuer, which helped him when founding his own studio. His first independent project was commissioned by his parents, asking him to build them a house. Even the greatest architect must start somewhere. When he gains support from his closest ones and experiences from the best, then he finds it easier to succeed. More than half a century has passed since Meier founded his office. Today, his office competes with S.O.M. projects.
Richard Alan Meier, along with P. Eisenman, J. Hejduk, Ch. Gwathmey, and M. Graves was part of the so-called New York Five, who exhibited together at MoMA in the early 70s (Five Architects, 1972). Originally, it was a group of young intellectuals from the East Coast who aimed to programmatically turn towards the roots of functionalism and purism in Europe (named in 1932 the International Style by Americans H.R. Hitchcock and P. Johnson). While some of the original five later deviated towards deconstruction or postmodernism, Meier has persisted in his career with Le Corbusier's legacy and firmly adhered to his motto: "Architecture is a scientific, precise, and grand game of volumes concentrated under the sun." Throughout the past half-century, Meier has thrived with pure white volumes, which he formed into "a harmonic rhythm of planes, light, and shadow."
More information >
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