By Mark Sommer, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Mar. 14--The color white occasionally reaches iconic status, as seen in such cultural touchstones as the Beatles' "White Album," crisp Good Humor uniforms and the trademark suits of writer Tom Wolfe.
In architecture, the use of white has for five decades been a signature design element of Modernist titan Richard Meier. An early influence, he has said, came courtesy of White Castle, those gleaming, porcelain-perfect hamburger stands found on the coasts. Meier is quick to say, though, that white is never just white.
"The whiteness reflects all the colors around us," Meier, 75, said in a recent interview from his studio on Manhattan's Upper West Side. "In my office here, there is so much color I can barely stand it. Thank God the walls are white so I can see the color in a painting, and in the books on the shelves.
"There is plenty of color, and the white allows us to appreciate that color. It intensifies our perception of color, and the way that color changes throughout the day the way nature changes."
Meier's white enamel panels and other essential design characteristics, including his use of glass, natural light and space flow, are found in more than 50 nationally and internationally acclaimed Modernist structures in the United States, Europe and Asia. They range from corporate headquarters, courthouses and city halls to university buildings, churches and private homes.
But it is in the design of museums where Meier's architectural vision has arguably reached its zenith.
"Mr. Meier has really built remarkable museum buildings in his career," said Louis Grachos, director of Albright-Knox Art Gallery. "There is a natural flow to how he designs space, and one of the things I really respect about his work is the lightness to his architecture, which gives the best possible context for artwork to shine.
"The spaces, which are always clean and stark, are the epitome of Modernism, and frankly, art looks best in that kind of environment."
Meier will make his first trip to Buffalo on Wednesday when he presents a lecture, "Notes on Architecture," at 5:30 p.m. in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery auditorium. The free event is co-hosted by the Burchfield Penney Art Center and University at Buffalo's School of Architecture and Planning.
His crown jewel
The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art in Spain, Burda Collection Museum in Baden-Baden, Germany, and an addition to the Des Moines Art Center are among those that have drawn raves.
But it was in designing the $1.3 billion Getty Museum, overlooking Los Angeles, that Meier was seen by many to have reached his crowning achievement.
Meier began work on the Getty in 1984, the same year that, at age 49, he became the youngest architect to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the field's highest honor.
In a departure from his use of white, the six buildings on the 24-acre campus required 16,000 tons of beige-colored travertine stone imported from Italy, and 40,000 off-white, enamel-clad aluminum panels.
"The Getty is held up as the model for all museums. It's a spectacular complex to the arts," said Nancy Weekly, Burchfield Penney's head of collections and Charles Cary Rumsey curator. "There are beautiful vistas from so many different directions that you feel transported to a different space with his work."
Meier acknowledged in his 1997 book, "Building the Getty," that the project was "a once-in-a-lifetime commission of such scale, complexity, cost and ambition that it consumed my life for the better part of 14 years."
He said the throngs of people who visit the museum are in many ways the best testament to his work.
"If ever I'm seriously depressed, all I have to do is go to the Getty. I see the people going there, appreciating it, going back day after day. It's something unique in America, certainly, unique in southern California, because it's a public place, a place of coming together, a cultural destination."
Public use has become increasingly important to Meier since he developed a reputation early in his career for designing stunning residences.
"As a younger architect, I had the opportunity to design a number of private houses, and they sort of took on a life of their own, and became influential in terms of the world of architecture," Meier said.
"As my practice changed over the years, I had the opportunity to also do public buildings, and it's really the public buildings that are the important thing as an architect. More people come into contact with the experience.
"You do a house for two, three people, and though others may see it in photographs, it's a private work, it doesn't take on any public presence."
Wright and Bunshaft
Wayne Wisbaum, an attorney and senior partner with Kavinoky, Cook, said there was something special about Meier when they met as Cornell University freshmen and fraternity brothers in 1952.
Meier, who was born in Newark, N.J., and grew up in neighboring Maplewood, arrived at Cornell intent on studying architecture.
"From the first day I met him he stood out. He was a fascinating individual -- bright, outgoing and very charismatic, as well as uniquely gifted," Wisbaum said.
"He was also very gifted in his studies; anybody who knew him could see that. At the same time, he was easy to talk to and be with. A lot of us expected great things of him from the outset."
This will be Meier's first trip to Buffalo to see its architectural marvels -- and no one is more surprised by that, he said, than he.
"For some reason -- I can't really explain it -- I never had the opportunity to come to Buffalo to see some of these very important works," Meier said.
After his plane touches ground, Meier will be shown a number of leading sites, including the Darwin Martin House Complex, Guaranty Building, Kleinhans Music Hall and Olmsted Richardson Complex. Meier is also going to be given a tour of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where he'll have a chance to see -- and later speak in -- a building his first employer out of college was designing at the time.
Meier worked six months for Buffalo architect Gordon Bunshaft at the New York branch of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, after graduating Cornell in 1957 with a bachelor's degree in architecture. The glass-and-marble addition by Bunshaft, who died in 1990, opened in 1962.
Meier recalled Bunshaft fondly. "I have nothing but the highest admiration for him and his work."
Meier, who studied the work of Frank Lloyd Wright extensively while at Cornell, said he looks forward to seeing his Martin House Complex. He cites the architectural giant as an early career influence, especially after staying overnight with friends at age 17 in Fallingwater, cited often as Wright's greatest work.
"It was in the autumn, and I got to experience it on a beautiful October day. That image and that experience stayed with me," Meier said.
Of Wright, Meier says, "I've been positively influenced by him in terms of internal and external space, his understanding of how important natural light is in architecture, and the fact that he paved the way for architects like myself."
Meier self-consciously paid tribute to Wright's Guggenheim Museum in his design of the High Museum in Atlanta. But he also veers away from Wright in fundamental ways.
"Although I must say I have the highest regard for his work, when you read some of the things he said, they don't quite jibe. His whole notion of organic architecture was, as far as I can see, something not to be pursued, because architecture is not organic, it's not living, it's inert. What changes is the weather, the environment; architecture is static," Meier said.
Rebuffed by Le Corbusier
While in Cornell, Meier become enamored of pioneer Modernist architect Le Corbusier. After graduating, he visited most of Le Corbusier's European works, even going to the Swiss-French architect's Paris studio seeking work as an unpaid intern. He was rebuffed because of the Europeans' anger at the time toward the United States.
That didn't dissuade Meier from becoming an acolyte of Le Corbusier. The first significant notice he received in his career was as a member of the New York Five -- five Manhattan architects whose work at a Museum of Modern Art exhibition in 1967, later compiled in a book, reflected a pure form of Modernism that owed a debt to Le Corbusier.
Today, the self-described "modern architect" and his Manhattan firm, Richard Meier & Partners Architects, show no signs of slowing down.
Among his projects are a hotel in China; a corporate headquarters in Hamburg and another in Tokyo; a high-tech greenhouse in Luxembourg; a 30-story residential tower in Tel Aviv; three residential/commercial towers in Mexico; and a courthouse in Sonoma County, Calif.
It will all add, no doubt to a remarkable, and ongoing legacy.
"Richard Meier continues to inspire generations of people with an interest in design, planning and the construction of the physical environment through his ideas, unique drawings and single-minded pursuit of contemporary architecture," said Brian Carter, dean of the UB School of Architecture and Planning.
None of Meier's current pursuits are likely to attract anything like the controversy that surrounded his Ara Pacis Museum in Rome, which replaced a deteriorated enclosure for the sacrificial altar that dates back to 9 B.C. Critics loudly complained upon its opening in 2006 that the white, block-like structure clashed with Rome's classical architecture.
Meier said he has taken the criticism in stride.
"You have to spend time in Italy to understand that, unlike in this country, architecture and politics are so intertwined. This is the first building built in the historic center of Rome since Mussolini, so it had to be highly controversial no matter what it was."
However, Meier said, the best reward of all has happened -- people are going to see it.
"Since it was completed, it's the third most-visited building in Rome. That makes me very happy."
msommer@buffnews.com
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