About this talk

Running time: 30 minutes

The late American born Charles Gwathmey studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and at Yale between 1956 and 1962. In 1966 he set up in practice with Richard Henderson. Robert Siegel joined them in 1970, Henderson left the following year. Gwathmey Siegel received very many awards for their work, and Gwathmey himself taught in most of the major architecture schools in the USA. He first became known internationally as one of the "Five Architects" in the exhibition of that name at Princeton, 1972, which subsequently travelled to Europe. Later the partnership was much in the public eye over its proposals for extending the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

In this talk, Gwathmey discusses the problems of designing an extension to such a masterpiece. Their scheme completes a twenty year cycle of work that began with the design of his parents' house.

Gwathmey Siegel adhere to the ideas and aesthetic of Modernism but not to the dogma. In relation to painting they would like to be referred to as Cubist. Their architectural vocabulary is reductive and abstract, expressing Corbusian forms in an Americanised way, with exterior and interior space interspersed and overlaid, establishing a sensibility of place as opposed to object.

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