A Sarasota journalist recently looked back on the controversial career of architect Paul Rudolph, who died of mesothelioma a little more than a decade ago. Paul Rudolph moved to Sarasota, Florida in 1948 as a dynamic, Harvard-trained young architect and left ten years later to serve as the dean of the School of Art and Architecture at Yale. While at Yale, he became widely known as a tower of mid-century design. But his buildings became known for their problems. His imposing “Brutalist” style structures were built from poured concrete that developed cracks and leaks. Two of the high schools the architect built in Sarasota, Florida suffered structural, environmental and acoustic problems almost as soon as they were completed. Rudolph’s most famous work, the Art and Architecture building at Yale, had an innovative asbestos ceiling that had to be ripped out and replaced in the 1970s. By the 1980s, the architect worked mainly in Asia, where the issues with his American buildings were less well known. It was not until after Texas billionaire Sid Bass, a 1965 Yale graduate, gave $20 million to Yale in 2000 to restore the Art and Architecture building, that Rudolph’s reputation experienced a turnaround. Rudolph died in 1997 from mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer caused by inhalation of asbestos fibers.
For the full story, go to the Herald Tribune.
