Architect Raimund Abraham in fatal L.A. crash

Austrian architect Raimund Abraham, best known in this country for his knife-thin 2002 Austrian Cultural Forum building in Manhattan, was killed in a car crash in downtown Los Angeles early Thursday morning, according to a report from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).

Abraham was a visiting faculty member this term at SCI-Arc and delivered a lecture at the school Wednesday night.

SCI-Arc director Eric Owen Moss issued the following statement: "Earlier in the evening Raimund delivered a powerful lecture at SCI-Arc, re-stating his enduring love for architecture and his willingness to fight for the design discourse as he defined it. That unique and powerful Abraham advocacy for architecture is irreplaceable. Raimund, We miss you."

Born in Tyrol in 1933, Abraham spent most of his adult life in New York, and began teaching at Manhattan's Cooper Union School of Architecture in 1971. He beat out more than 200 other entries to win a competition for the Austrian Cultural Forum, which the architectural historian Kenneth Frampton, who served on the jury that chose Abraham for the commission, called "the most significant modern piece of architecture to be realized in Manhattan since the Seagram Building and the Guggenheim Musuem of 1959." Abraham himself compared the sharply angled facade of the building to a falling guillotine.

A gathering in honor of the architect will be held Friday at 1 p.m. at SCI-Arc's W.M. Keck Lecture Hall.

-- Christopher Hawthorne

Photograph: The Austrian Cultural Forum. Credit: Flickr user 2613 say yeah!

Comments

[justin]

He is actually best know as teacher of architecture. Not by one building.

[Rick Rofihe]

Actually, Raimund timed his renunciation of his Austrian citizenship and the acquisition of his American one with the unveiling of the Austrian Cultural Forum building.

[farnaz]

Abraham was the most influential teacher in my education. I am sorry and shocked to hear he has passed.

[Donald Frazell]

Interesting building, but another example of the complete and total lack of color in post modern architecture. May be appropriate here considering the site and client, but artists need to get involved with architects in the future. the grim Star Wars stuff is impersonal and sterile.

Interesting shapes, not sure how well it is as practicality adn livability, its main purpose. But teh pure spectacles of intellectualism need to end, it failed. Lin, color and structure, we ned to integrate, at least some trees damnit.

[schoenfelder]

Seems like he had his own demise on his mind when designing that building. It's hard to miss that giant cross in the middle of the facade.

[chang]

I remember him at a lecture at graduate architecture school. Of all the guest lecturers who have visited over the years, Raimund was the only one who conveyed a message to the students: 'to believe in oneself' in spite of the non-winning of competitions. I am infinitely inspired by his words.

[Jack Becker]

donald,
this isn't an architecture blog and your aesthetic opinions are of offensive irrelevance to the subject: a great man's death.

[Donald Frazell]

Greatness is judged by those who must live with the works, not those who are his students. I am sorry for his death, as anyones who has benefited the world. But this isn't the obituaries either. It is about art, that was the mans life work. And his epitaph. The final judgment will take years as styles and tastes change, does it last. And the architecture of the last decades is definitely on the way out, it is not sustainable and reflected the greatness of individual man, something we have seen to be built of clay.

[Philip Cerniglia/Cerniglia Architecture and Planning P.C.]

Raimund was my design studio professor at Pratt Institute in 1978. My project involved the inventive reuse of the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge. Raimund's guidence concerning the articulate and poetic expression of form made this one of my most meaningful and memorable experiences as a student. What I learned from Raimund has forever influenced mywork.

[jollyD]

Donald, darling, if you would like more color in your life do come down to Chelsea some evening. Disneyland has lots of color and trees too.
Yes, Raimund's building is interesting. There is also a wonderful interior to inhabit. I performed in the theater during the architects opening (cello and bass clarinet duet) which has beautiful curved, wooden walls giving it the feeling of being inside a giant wooden instrument and a piano that's hidden in the ceiling. What a surprise to see a flying baby grand?

Wishing Raimund infinite love and gratitude.

[SouthparkinLA]

I was at that lecture at Sci-Arc and I was deeply saddened to hear that he was killed in an car accident downtown.

[Donald Frazell]

Nah, the adolescent color feel of Disney and Chelsea arent really interesting to adults. Color is not just a couple thrown around, either conceptual or of the object. Color is spiritual, and god was taken out of contemporary art long ago, along with nature. There is only the handwringing color splashes of self absorbed individual children now.
Therapy, not art.

art collegia delenda est

[SouthparkinLA]

Is even more deeply saddened that with his passing people are critiquing his art. One of the last things that he said at the lecture that night was don't let people tell you how or what you vision should be...I think that fits into architecture and life itself.

[Ira Ballen]

I was shocked and saddened to hear of Raimund Abraham's death. Of all my instructors at Pratt Institute (from 1973 to 1976), he had the most profound impact on my work and on me personally.

In response to some of the previous comments: it is easy to criticize but unbelievably rare to truly inspire!