In celebration of what would have been Paul Rudolph’s 100th birthday (on Oct. 23), the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation is collaborating with the Center for Architecture in New York to exhibit a collection of never-before-seen renderings, drawings, and sketches of the late American architect’s time working in Asia. "Paul Rudolph: The Hong Kong Journey" will be on view from Nov. 29 through March 9 of next year.
A graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rudolph served as the chair of Yale University's architecture department and is best known for his Brutalist concrete Yale Art and Architecture Building. But from 1980 until his death in 1997, Rudolph frequently worked in Hong Kong where he was able to make "conclusive statements on the effects and affects of architecture and urbanism, built on a scale that was no longer afforded to him in the United States," according to a press release. While most of his projects went unbuilt, his designs during this period reflect his "life-long pursuit of scale in high-rise buildings," according to the foundation.
Curated by Nora Leung, a director of Hong Kong–based Chau Ku & Leung Architects and Engineers, the exhibition focuses on three of Rudolph's projects, only one of which—the Bond Centre, now the Lippo Centre—was completed in 1988.
One of the two featured unbuilt projects is Plantation Road, a three-family residence that Rudolph designed in two variations: one split into three single-family residences, and the other featuring apartment-style dwellings.
Plans for the unbuilt Harbour Road Tower, a proposal for the Sino Land Company’s 1989 architecture competition to build the tallest building in Asia, will also be displayed at the exhibit.
“Our perceptions of architecture change more than our perceptions of the other arts, in spite of architecture’s relative permanence,” Rudolph once wrote in the 1974 lecture notes for “Space,” according to the release. “This is because we must use architecture, and the conditions of that use are constantly modified by matters both physical and spiritual. It may be the weather, the time of the year, our own particular time of life; our personal activities; our mood; the economic, political or philosophical twists and turns of fate; but, most importantly, it will be modified by our particular reading, and re-reading, of history.”
The Rudolph centennial exhibition will run from Nov. 29, 2018, through March 9, 2019, at the Center for Architecture in New York.
