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"Rudolph building finally has real hope for rescue.
A year and a half ago, we would have laid better than even odds that the original Paul Rudolph structure at Riverview High School ultimately would face the wrecking ball. Now this community has before it a clear vision for the building's rescue and resurrection.

Rudolph's undergraduate thesis, "Glass in Architecture and Decoration" which he completed at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) in 1940 is now available as full-text document on this web site. Look under the title entry or click below.

http://prudolph.lib.umassd.edu/files/pr/RudolphThesisAuburnRev.pdf

Two presentation drawings of the Earl W. Brydges Library in Niagara Falls, NY have been added to the web site. The large drawings, prints on mylar, were given to the Claire T. Carney Library by William Grindereng, a long time associate of Paul Rudolph in New Haven and Boston. One of the drawings is a very unusual, almost disorienting, aerial perspective of the project. Thanks to Bill Grindereng for the donation as well as Boston Photo Imaging for digitizing the items and Justin Maucione of the Claire T. Carney Library for preparing the images for the web site.

The school board in Sarasota County has delayed the decision on the fate of Riverview High School for three months. The Revive Rudolph's Riverview Committee of the Sarasota Architectural Foundation has worked hard to save the Rudolph-designed building developing a new plan named the Riverview Music Quadrangle. This gives the organizers of the RMQ time to refine their plan.

Sarasota Herald-Trbune, March 6, 2008

“I have been influenced by the fact that people perceive the first six stories (or 120 feet) of a high-rise building in a very different way from the rest of it. I came to that 120 feet because it has been shown (and I tested this myself) that most people can’t recognize other people from more than 120 feet. So what happens higher than this matters only as seen from a great distance. Therefore, you can argue that above 120 feet, the high-rise tower can be scale less, but below this level, the building must achieve a human scale.”

Through the continued generosity of the Library of Architecture, Design and Construction and the efforts of Mr. Boyd Childress at Auburn University, the web site has acquired and posted digital scans of 11 individual drawings of the Chapel at the Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee AL. This building is often cited as one of Paul Rudolph's most important works.

http://prudolph.lib.umassd.edu/node/14103

Thanks to Harold Bubil, Real Estate Editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, for sending the link to his very informative podcasts relative to the effort to save from demolition Paul Rudolph's Riverview High School in Sarasota, FL.

www.heraldtribune.com/podcasts

Photographs by Chris Mottalini document the demise of the houses of Paul Rudolph in the exhibition "Building Pictures" currently running at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago from April 4 to May 31, 2008.

http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2008/04/architectural_i.php

“When working on the Tuskegee Chapel, I suggested a continuous slot of glass around the perimeter just below the roof, so the natural light enters the sanctuary diagonally. The roof is hyperbolic paraboloid in form for acoustic reasons, and the space rises diagonally and escapes through glass. The directions of the movement of space are in opposite but balanced directions, which is largely responsible for the dynamic quality of the space. In addition, there is a varying velocity of the movement of space.