Peter Blake (architect)

Peter Blake , actually Peter Jost Blach (* 20th September 1920 in Berlin , † 5. December 2006 in Branford , Connecticut ) was a from Germany originating, American architect and author .

Life

Peter Blake was born in Berlin in 1920 as a child of the wealthy Jewish Blach family and was initially named Peter Jost Blach. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the family sent their son to school in England. His parents later each left Germany separately. In 1938 he began studying at the University of London , in 1939 he became a student at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture , London .

He then emigrated to the United States and was a student at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia from 1940 to 1941 , where he worked for Louis Kahn , among others . In 1944 he received US citizenship and changed his name from Peter Jost Blach to Peter Blake. He joined the US Army. After training at Camp Ritchie , Maryland , he came to the European theater of war and was one of the American troop contingents who marched into Berlin . Blake remained in the US Army until 1947, when he returned to New York City .

He settled in Long Island with a group of artists, architects and writers (including Jackson Pollock , Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning ). He was especially close friends with Jackson Pollock.

From 1948 to 1950, Blake was a curator for architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art , New York. During this time he wrote books on Marcel Breuer , Frank Lloyd Wright , Le Corbusier , Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, among others .

From 1950 to 1972 he was one of the authoritative authors of the influential Architectural Forum magazine , later became editor-in-chief, and then from 1964 to 1972 publisher of this magazine. After the magazine had to discontinue its publication, he tried to establish his own magazine on the market with Architecture Plus that same year . But in 1975 this too had to stop its publication.

From 1958 to 1961 he was a partner in the architecture firm PB & Julian Neski, Inc., New York and from 1964 to 1972 James Baker and PB, Architects, New York .

Blake has taught architecture at several universities. Since 1975 he has been Dean of the Boston Architectural Center , School of Architecture. In 1979 he became dean of the faculty of architecture and planning at the Catholic University in Washington, DC and taught there until 1979. After retiring from Catholic University, Peter Blake moved to Connecticut , where he continued to write books and articles, and columns for New York Magazine and Interior Design .

Peter Blake was married three times - to Martha Howard, Petty Nelson Blake and Susan Tamulevich. All three marriages were divorced.

Peter Blake died on December 5, 2006 at the age of 86 in Branford, Connecticut.

Act

Blake was an enthusiastic follower and chronicler of modernism, believed in the beauty of clean lines and the elegance of simple, functional shapes.

Together with Le Corbusier , Mies van der Rohe , whom he knew and admired, and other icons of modern architecture, he rejected the sterility and ugliness of post-war modernism because he remained true to his conviction that architecture had to fulfill a social function , and its purpose is to improve the lives of those who lived and worked within the structures designed by architects.

In the architecture that prevailed after the Second World War, Blake criticized the one-dimensional functionalism of the building industry, which was mainly oriented towards technical and economic requirements and largely suppressed aesthetic and social values.

Blake designed the "Ideal Museum" for his friend Jackson Pollock as early as 1949. According to the design, the walls of the building were to be mirrored in order to reproduce the paintings by Pollock several times. However, it was not built. Blake's outstanding designs include houses in the Hamptons , Russell House in Bridgehampton from 1956, his own house built in 1960 on Mecox Bay , and Armstrong House in Montauk from 1961. Blake's most famous building project is that "Pin Wheel House", a vacation home for his own family, built by him in 1955 in Water Mill , New York .

Although Peter Blake designed / erected more than fifty buildings, he achieved far greater importance as a writer. He has written hundreds of articles and published more than a dozen books on architecture and the life and work of famous architects of the 20th century. His most famous works include:

• The Master Builders: Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Loyd Wright (1960),
• A History of Modern Architecture: God's Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape (1964)
• Form Follows Fiasco - Why Modern Architecture Hasn't Worked (1978)
• His autobiography No Place like Utopia. Modern Architecture and the Company We Kept (1993).

“He was the voice of a whole generation of architects and designers and should be better known,” wrote Alastair Gordon , himself a writer and architecture critic.

Memberships

• Fellow American Institute of Architects (AIA)
• Architectural League, New York (among others 1966–1968 Vice President, 1971–1972 President)
• International Design Conference, Aspen / Colo. (1965–1970 Board of Dir.)

Awards

• 1960 Howard Myers Journalism Award, AIA;
• 1962 Graham Fellowship;
• 1968/69 Medal of Honor and Award of Merit, AIA;
• 1975 Archit. Critic's Medal, AIA.

Fonts (selection)

• The Master Builders: Le Corbusier, Mies Van Der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, by Peter Blake, 1960
• God's Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape, by Peter Blake, Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1964
• The New Forces, by Peter Blake, Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Victorian Chapter, 1971
• Architecture for the New World: The Work of Harry Seidler, by Peter Blake, Horwitz Australia Wittenborn, 1973
• Great Architecture of the World, by Peter Blake, Random House, 1976
• Form Follows Fiasco: Why Modern Architecture Hasn't Worked, by Peter Blake, Little Brown & Co, 1978
• Peter Blake, by Peter Blake, Tate Gallery, 1983
• Davis Brody & Associates, by Peter Blake, Rizzoli, 1987
• Architecture for the New World - The Architecture of Arthur Erickson, by Arthur Erickson, Peter Blake (designer), Harper Collins, 1988
• Edward Larrabbee Barnes: Architect, by Peter Blake, Rizzoli, 1995
• Gustav Peichl. New Projects / Recent Projects. ed. by W. Zschokke, P. Blake; Birkhäuser Verlag; 1996
• No Place Like Utopia: Modern Architecture and the Company We Kept, by Peter Blake, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1993
• Philip Johnson, by Peter Blake, paperback, Springer Verlag, 1996
• Craig Ellwood, Architecture, by Ester Mc Coy, Peter Blake, paperback, Hennessey & Ingalls, 1997
• How to Design the Perfect Building, by Peter Blake, RS Means & Co, 1997
• Private Architecture: Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century, by Roberto Schezen, Susan Doubilet, Peter Blake (introduction), The Monacelli Press, 1998
• The Architecture of Ulrich Franzen: Selected Works, by Peter Blake, George Weissman, Ulrich Franzen, hardcover, Birkhäuser, 1999

literature

Kasiske, Michael, Peter Blake (1920-2006), Nekrolog. archithese 3.2007, May / June 2007

Web links

• Literature by and about Peter Blake in the catalog of the German National Library
• Peter Blake (architect). In: arch INFORM .