SAH Study Day, Getty Research Institute, 2 February 2011
During the SAH Study Day at the Getty Research Institute on February 2, Head of the Department of Architecture and Contemporary Art, Wim de Witt, and Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design, Christopher Alexander, presented numerous materials from the GRI’s impressive special collections. USC architectural historian Kenneth Breisch, architectural documentary filmmaker Bette Cohen, and the University of Technology Sydney Architecture Dean Desley Luscombe were among the some two-dozen participants.
For the morning session, the curators assembled an array of artifacts from the GRI’s diverse architecture and design collections. Highlights included drawings from the École Polytechnique (1806), George Saunders’s drawings for the Stag Brewery in London (1807), architectural drawings for the Gare Saint-Charles railroad station in Marseille (1848), original trademark designs by Bauhaus graphic artist Carl Ernst Hinkefuss (1912-56), Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann’s interior design drawings (1924-33), Bernard Rudofsky’s watercolors of Santorini (1929), John and Donald Parkinson’s design and construction drawings for Union Station in Los Angeles (1934-39), and architect Karl Schneider’s product designs for Sears (1938-45).
The afternoon session displayed drawings and models from the archives of Modern architects including Yona Friedman, Ray Kappe, Pierre Koenig, John Lautner, and Frank Israel, as well as prints from the archive of architectural photographer Julius Shulman. The curators also presented Daniel Libeskind’s sketchbook for the Jewish Museum in Berlin (1988-92), and selections from Aldo Rossi’s notebooks on architecture (1986). Following these sessions in the Special Collections Reading Room, participants were invited to a tour and reception at the spectacular 1967 Ray Kappe House in the Rustic Canyon neighborhood of West Los Angeles.
The GRI’s recent initiative to acquire mid-century Modern archives signals a significant refocusing of The Getty’s resources. In the area of California Modernism, for example, only the Architecture and Design Collection at the University of California, Santa Barbara, now rivals The Getty’s holdings. Thankfully, most of the GRI’s recent architecture acquisitions are not “best of” archives that showcase exquisite renderings and promotional images (although those are also represented), but rather “most useful” collections that are intended to facilitate research into the idiosyncratic design processes of Modern architects. Sketchbooks, journals, and study models are therefore framed as crucial components of the collections, many of which open unprecedented research opportunities for architecture and design scholars.
Jon Yoder
Assistant Professor
Syracuse Architecture
