Charles W(illard) Moore - Biography, Work

Architect and educator, born in Benton Harbor, Michigan, USA. He taught widely, notably at Yale (1965–75) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1975–85). In several partnerships, notably Moore Lyndon Turnbull Whitaker (1962–70), he produced designs juxtaposing disparate historical and cultural references.

Biography

Moore graduated from the University of Michigan in 1947 and earned both a Masters and Doctorate at Princeton University in 1957, where he stayed for an additional year as a post-Doctoral fellow. In 1959, Moore left New Jersey and began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1975 he moved to the University of California, Los Angeles, and finally in 1985 he became the O'Neil Ford Centennial Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.

Moore opened practice in New Haven, Connecticut and in the following years practiced under a confusing variety of configurations and partners and names (including Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker (MLTW), Centerbrook Architects, Moore Ruble Yudell, Urban Innovations Group, and Moore/Andersson) through his extensive worldwide travels and moves to California and then to Austin, Texas.

With his preference for conspicuous design features, loud color combinations, supergraphics, stylistic collisions, the re-use of esoteric historical design solutions, and the use of non-traditional materals like plastic, (aluminized) PET film, platinum tiles, and neon signs, Moore's architecture always provides arousal, demands attention, and sometimes tips over into kitsch.

In addition to his influential work as an architect and university educator, Moore was also one of the most prolific authors in American architectural history.

The Place of Houses (with Gerald Allen and Donlyn Lyndon) Dimensions (with Gerald Allen) Body, Memory and Architecture (with Kent Bloomer) The Poetics of Gardens The City Observed: Los Angeles (with Peter Becker and Regula Campbell) Water and Architecture Chambers for a Memory Palace (with Donlyn Lyndon)

"Body, Memory, and Architecture," written with Kent Bloomer during the Yale years, is a plea for architects to design structures for three-dimensional user experience instead of two-dimensional visual appearance. Moore Foundation was established in 1997 in Austin, Texas to preserve Moore's last home and studio.

Work

The influential 1965 Sea Ranch Condominium Project in Sonoma County, California, (with landscape architect Lawrence Halprin) The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley Kresge College at University of California Santa Cruz The Beverly Hills Civic Center in Beverly Hills, California University Extension at the University of California, Irvine The University of Michigan's Lurie Tower The 1978 small public plaza Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans, Louisiana, and His last work, the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, Washington