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I have been quite busy from the beginning of the year, and so have only now felt able to acknowledge the death of my mentor and friend, Hugh Hardy, on March 17. The first time I saw Hugh was at a building where his company was vacating a floor, and I was involved in the renovation of that same floor for a new tenant. I found myself in the elevator with him, and was so flustered at being alone with a longtime architectural hero that I stood there tongue-tied.  That was in 1986. Three years later I had gained some experience doing perspectives for offices where I worked, and I began working as a freelance architectural renderer. Late in 1991 I got a call asking if I had time to work on the Vancouver Library competition. That competition was won by Moshe Safdie, but Hugh liked my work and we got along easily. I did rendering work for Hugh, as well as his partner Malcolm Holzman, for the next ten years. Although his projects were usually performing arts venues, he was quite capable of...

Ada Louise Huxtable died this past Monday.   Her influence was so strong that every architect of my generation must have felt her presence while he worked.   She was THE architectural critic who set the standard for all later practitioners; always well informed, well connected, but at the same time always uncompromisingly CRITICAL.   And after all, that is what a critic is supposed to be.   I’ve looked through my newspaper clippings, and didn’t find any article by her on a project I was connected with.   This is to be expected since she gave up her Sunday column at the New York Times in 1982, just before I became involved in some of the high profile projects of 80’s and 90’s.   Nevertheless, I remember Sunday mornings with Ada’s prose, which was direct, opinionated, and refreshingly free of fashionistics.  A very nice interview of her by the New York Times is here . Her best book, in my opinion was The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered (1982). ...