Eric Mumford, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the Urban Design Program in the School of Architecture, will speak on “Modern Architecture in St. Louis” at 7 p.m. Sept. 29 in Steinberg Auditorium.
Mumford recently edited Modern Architecture in St. Louis: Washington University & Postwar American Architecture, 1948-1973 (2004), the first in-depth survey of modern architecture as it evolved in St. Louis. Topics include a history of Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch; modernist sacred architecture in the city and surrounding suburbs; and the prominent role played by the School of Architecture, its faculty and alumni.
Principal essays are by Mumford; Hélène Lipstadt, a director of the firm DOCOMOMO US and research affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Kathleen James-Chakraborty, associate professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.
The book also features a personal history by Constantine Michaelides, dean of architecture from 1973-93, and memoirs by his immediate predecessors, Joseph Passonneau and George Anselevicius.
Fumihiko Maki, the Pritzker Prize-winning former faculty member and current Sam Fox Arts Center architect, also contributed a memoir, as did alumnus Gyo Obata, a founding principal of Hellmuth, Obata Kassabaum, the international firm headquartered in St. Louis.
Modern Architecture in St. Louis is published by the School of Architecture and distributed by University of Chicago Press. The book, which includes more than 100 archival photographs and drawings, was designed by Ken Botnick, associate professor of art, and Ben Kiel at the emdash company in St. Louis. It retails for $40 and is available at the Campus Store.
Mumford came to the School of Architecture in 1994. He is the author of The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960 (2000), the only book-length history of the International Congress of Modern Architecture. He has published and lectured nationally and internationally on CIAM, Josep Lluis Sert and various aspects of 20th-century architecture and urbanism.
His many honors include three grants from the Graham Foundation, including one in support of Modern Architecture in St. Louis.
Mumford earned a doctorate from the Princeton University School of Architecture in 1996; a master’s of architecture from MIT in 1983, and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1980.
A licensed architect, he practiced in New York City for much of the 1980s and spent a term at the Architectural Association in London in 1981. In spring 2004, he was a visiting associate professor in the Department of Art & Architecture at Harvard.
His lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will be held at 6:30 p.m. in Givens Hall.
For more information, call 935-6200 or go online to www.arch.wustl.edu.