Charles Moore (architect)
Charles Willard Moore (October 31, 1925 – December 16, 1993) was an American architect, educator, writer, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991. He is often labeled as the father of postmodernism. His work as an educator was important to a generation of American architects who read his books or studied with him at one of the several universities where he taught.
For other people named Charles Moore, see Charles Moore (disambiguation).
Charles Willard Moore
October 31, 1925
December 16, 1993 (aged 68)
Architect
AIA Gold Medal (1991)
Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull & Whittaker, San Francisco
Piazza D'Italia
Haas School
Sea Ranch, California
Yale Building Project
Education[edit]
Moore graduated from the University of Michigan in 1947, where he was one of the top students in his class. After graduating, he worked for several years as an architect, served in the Army, and studied with Professor Jean Labatut at Princeton University, where he earned a master's degree and a PhD (1957). He remained for an additional year as a post-doctoral fellow, and as a teaching assistant to the architect Louis Kahn, who was teaching a design studio. While at Princeton, he met and befriended the architect Robert Venturi.[1]
While at Princeton, Moore developed relationships with fellow students Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull Jr., Richard Peters, and Hugh Hardy. All remained lifelong friends and adherents to a view of architecture as a joyful, humanistic, pursuit that promised to make people happier and healthier. During his Princeton years, Moore designed and built a house for his mother in Pebble Beach, California, and worked during the summers for architect Wallace Holm of neighboring Monterey. Moore's Master's thesis explored ways to preserve and integrate Monterey's historic adobe dwellings into the fabric of the city. His Doctoral dissertation, "Water and Architecture", was a study of the importance of water in shaping the experience of place.[2] The dissertation is significant for being one of the first pieces of architectural scholarship to draw from the work of Gaston Bachelard.[3] Moore used some of the material in his later book, The Poetics of Gardens.[4]
Buildings and legacy[edit]
Moore preferred bold, colorful design elements, including striking color combinations, supergraphics, stylistic eclecticism, and the use of non-traditional materials such as plastic, (aluminized) PET film, platinum tiles, and neon signs. His work often provokes arousal, challenges norms, and can lean toward kitsch. His mid-1960s New Haven residence, published in Playboy, featured several plywood towers, each of which cut through one or more stories and featured large, graphical cutouts.[15] His house in Orinda, California was also unconventional; in lieu of interior walls, two interior aediculae focus the space, one over a sitting area and the other over a bathtub set into the ground. He made no bones about his love for roadside vernacular buildings in places like San Miguel Allende, the Sunset Strip, and Main Street in Disneyland.
His early work with MLTW was noted for the invention of a west coast regional vernacular in residential architecture that featured steeply pitched roofs, shingled exteriors, and bold areas of glass, including skylights. Moore and his partners always cited the influence of their predecessors in California, particularly Bay Area pioneers such as Bernard Maybeck, William Wurster, and Joseph Esherick. A whole school of west coast designers followed their lead in designing shed-like, wooden residences for their newly affluent clients.[16]
Moore was also sensitive to the needs of clients, building an innovative house for a blind man and his wife, and designing several churches. His urban design schemes were tailored to context and history, and his books are full of sophisticated scholarship on such things as Renaissance gardens, English Georgian houses, and Italian piazzas. His travels were always documented by color slides, sketches, and souvenirs, which he displayed prominently in his residences. Moore's Piazza d'Italia (1978), an urban public plaza in New Orleans, made prolific use of his exuberant design vocabulary and is frequently cited as the archetypal postmodern project. His university work includes the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth, the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts, the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Faculty Club at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Kresge College, at UC Santa Cruz, (demolished in 2020) was one of the most innovative residence hall buildings in America at the time of its construction. The main campus of National Dong Hwa University is his latest university work, finished in 1992.
Such design features (historical detail, ornament, fictional treatments, ironic significations) made Moore one of the chief proponents of postmodern architecture, along with Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, Stanley Tigerman, and Charles Jencks.[17]
The Charles W. Moore Foundation was established in 1997 in Austin, Texas to preserve Moore's last home and studio. Its non-profit programs include residencies, conferences, lectures, and publication of PLACENOTES, a travel guide.