Richard Meier: Art and Architecture

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About Richard Meier: Art and Architecture

A solo retrospective of the architecture, design, sculpture and artwork of architect Richard Meier, will be held at the Louise T Blouin Institute this October – it will be the first time an architect will be shown within the Institute’s space. The retrospective will present Meier’s extraordinary versatility as artist, designer and architect and comprise an overview of Meier’s outstanding international architectural creations alongside an exploration of his sculpture, collages, drawings, photographs, furniture and product design over the last 45 years. Meier’s furniture, ceramic, glassware and silver objects have become iconic designs and marry a minimalist tradition with beautiful simplicity. The sculpture and collages (which he has created from papers, tickets and cuttings collected on his travels) express space and pivotal moments that are explored and articulated in his buildings.

The youngest architect to have received the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1984) - considered the field's highest honor and often equated with the Nobel Prize - Meier was also selected as the architect for the prestigious commission to design the $1 billion Getty Center in Los Angeles, California. Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1934, Richard Meier studied architecture at Cornell University, developing his own distinctive and dynamic style of architecture to become one of America’s most influential and widely emulated architects. After graduating in 1957, during a trip to Europe he sought to join the office of his early idol, the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. Although Meier was able to meet Corbusier in Paris, the master would not hire him, or any other American, at that time, since Corbusier believed that several major commissions throughout his career had been lost because of Americans. Meier returned to New York where he worked briefly for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and then for about three years with Marcel Breuer, a product of the German Bauhaus and former partner of Walter Gropius.

During his early career in New York, Meier was an architect by day and Abstract Expressionist painter at night. For a period of time he shared a studio with his close friend Frank Stella. Meier eventually gave up painting to devote himself more fully to architecture, although he continued to work on collages.

In 1963 Meier left Breuer to establish his own practice in New York. From 1963 to 1973 he taught at Cooper Union in New York and was a visiting critic at a number of other institutions. He began to meet with a group called CASE (Conference of Architects for the Study of the Environment), whose discussions of each other's buildings and projects resulted in the 1972 book Five Architects, featuring the work of some of the leaders of the Post-Modern movement - Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk and Richard Meier. Despite Meier's assertion that this was never a unified group, the ‘New York Five’ were identified with a return to the heroic early period of the European International Style, particularly the buildings of Le Corbusier during the 1920s and 1930s. An exhibition was devoted to the ‘New York Five’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In 1984, the year in which Richard Meier turned 50, he received the prestigious Pritzker Prize. By the mid-1980s, it was clear that this exceedingly consistent architect, who had shown that modern architecture is very much alive, had become one of the major architects of his day.

Among his most well-known projects are the High Museum in Atlanta; the Frankfurt Museum for Decorative Arts in Germany; Canal+ Television Headquarters in Paris; the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut; the Atheneum in New Harmony, Indiana, and the Bronx Developmental Center in New York. All of these have received National Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

Meier has ignored the fashion trends of modern architecture and maintained his own design philosophy. His designs are white Neo-Corbusian forms with enameled panels and glass. These structures usually play with the linear relationships of ramps and handrails. The three of the most significant concepts of Meier’s work are Light, Color and Place. His architecture shows how plain geometry, layered definition of spaces and effects of light and shade, allow clear and comprehensible spaces.