Morris Lapidus

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Morris Lapidus (born November 25, 1902 in Odessa , † January 18, 2001 in Miami Beach , Florida ) was an American architect of Russian origin. He is known for both extravagant and modern hotel buildings in curved shapes, the style of which he shaped in Miami Beach in the 1950s. Heavily scolded by contemporary architectural criticism, its buildings as forerunners of postmodern architecture have seen a positive revaluation since the 1980s.

Life

Lapidus came from a Jewish family from Tsarist Russia who emigrated to the USA one year after his birth due to the anti-Semitic pogroms of the time and settled on the Lower East Side in New York City . Lapidus attended Boys High School and studied with scholarships at New York University and the Columbia University School of Architecture .

During his studies, he still intended to become a set designer . From 1927, however, he worked as a retail designer for almost twenty years , designing exhibition and sales rooms for department stores , department stores and shops , including the design of the shop window area. First as an employee of a design company, then as an independent interior designer , he oversaw over 500 projects. Already at this time he preferred light colors, light for dramatic effects and curved lines instead of corners and edges - all trademarks of his later hotel buildings.

Through the mediation of an architect from the AS Beck shoe company, Lapidus came into contact with the investor Ben Novack in the early 1950s, who was planning to build several holiday hotels in Miami. Lapidus' ideas for an architecture aimed at stimulating the senses that satisfied the needs of hotel guests for fun and glamor convinced Novack and he hired him as an assistant for the construction planning. Lapidus helped design the Sans Souci , Nautilus , Algiers and Biltmore Terrace hotels , all on Miami's Collins Avenue.

The Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, built in 1954

After much pressure, Novack Lapidus confessed to the construction management of another project in 1952, the Fontainebleau Miami Beach in Miami Beach. The hotel building, curved in a quarter circle, with 14 floors, 460 rooms and a ballroom, which was designed for 9,000 people, was completed in 1954. It is Lapidus' most famous building and is considered a Miami landmark. The hotel is the setting for several scenes in the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964).

In quick succession, Lapidus designed two hotels with a similar layout: in 1955 the Eden Roc in Miami Beach and in 1956 the Americana in Bal Harbor (demolished in 2007). Outwardly quite functional, unusual shapes and ornaments, bright colors and extravagant additions, such as a terrarium with alligators in the reception room of the Americana and huge chandeliers in the Fontainebleau , shaped the interior of the building. The architect's attention to detail went so far that he even designed the bellboy uniforms personally.

The Washington Plaza Hotel in Washington DC, built in 1962

In later years, Lapidus also designed hotels and other buildings, such as apartment houses and synagogues, outside Florida , including several each in Las Vegas , New York, Washington, DC (including the Washington Plaza Hotel ), Los Angeles, and the Catskill Mountains . Some of his designs were also implemented abroad. Working on a total of 1200 buildings, including 250 hotels, earned him around $ 50 million. However, many of the buildings designed by him were later demolished or heavily modified.

His hotel buildings were very popular with tourists. He described himself as the “architect of the American Dream ”, which is also the title of an anthology from 1992 dedicated to him. In contrast, architecture critics and colleagues alike for a long time reviled his work. “Pension baroque”, “Landmarks of the tail fin style”, “Superramsch”, “Architectural pornography” and “Kitsch palaces” are among the most striking descriptions of his buildings. Philip Johnson was one of the few professionals who gave positive feedback about his work at an early stage. It was only after the emergence of postmodern architecture in the late 1980s that Lapidus began to reassess. Architects and designers, including Philippe Starck , Alessandro Mendini and Rem Koolhaas , have now found words of praise for his pioneering buildings. Scientific publications also increasingly spoke of its influence in the fields of architecture and design. Lapidus, who had already retired from professional life, then began to design new buildings.

In 1996 his memoirs appeared under the programmatic title Too Much Is Never Enough , a self-confident demarcation from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his credo “Less is more”. In the book, Lapidus also describes how a visit to Luna Park on Coney Island as a child inspired him to design similarly imaginative buildings as in the amusement park, and how, due to the continuing disregard for his buildings, when his architectural office was dissolved in 1984, he wrote most of his documents burned.

From 1929 until her death in 1992, Morris Lapidus was married to his childhood friend Beatrice; the two had two sons. During the last years of his life, Lapidus lived in an exclusive apartment in a high-rise in Miami, which he himself designed in the 1960s. He died there in January 2001 at the age of 98.

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literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the original: "boarding house baroque", "emblems of tail-fin chic", "Superschlock", "pornography of architecture" and "palaces of kitsch". See: Morris Lapidus Biography. on the website Miamibeach411.com . Undated, accessed September 8, 2010. Mervyn Rothstein: Morris Lapidus, an Architect Who Built Flamboyance Into Hotels, Is Dead at 98. In: New York Times . January 19, 2001.

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personal data
SURNAME Lapidus, Morris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American architect
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Odessa
DATE OF DEATH January 18, 2001
Place of death Miami Beach