Passings

John Hill
6. april 2022
Left to Right: John Andrews (Screenshot of 2015 interview posted by Australian Institute of Architects); Martin Steinmann (Screenshot of Prix Meret Oppenheim 2016 video); Kevin Lippert (Screenshot of 2017 Arthur Ross Awards Symposium).

John Andrews, 1933–2022

Born on October 29, 1933, John Andrews was a famed Australian architect, winning the RAIA Gold Medal in 1980. His two most famous buildings are actually found in Canada and the United States, where he worked in the 1960s: the Scarborough College "megastructure" at Toronto University (1963) and Gund Hall with its famous "Trays" that are home of the Harvard University Graduate School of Art and Design (1972). After returning to Australia, Andrews received many commissions, including convention centers in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney in the 1980s. Andrews died on March 24, 2022, at the age of 88.

Read: Obituary at ArchitectureAU by Paul Walker, author of the forthcoming book John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense.

Watch: Architecture - A Performing Art, a documentary on John Andrews directed by Michael Robertson and made by Film Australia in 1979.
 

Martin Steinmann, 1942–2022

Born on January 9, 1942, Martin Steinmann was an architect and architectural theorist who studied under Alfred Roth and then received his dissertation on CIAM in 1979 under Adolf Max Vogt. In 1975, together with Thomas Boga, he organized the famous touring exhibition Tendenzen – Neuere Architektur im Tessin ("Tendencies – Recent Architecture in Ticino"). From 1979 to 1985 he served as editor in chief of Archithese, subsequently founding, with Irma Noseda, his own studio for exhibitions and publications, Arge Baukunst. From 1987 until his retirement in 2007, Steinmann was Professor of Architecture and Architectural Theory at EPFL. Steinmann died on March 10, 2022, at the age of 80.

Read: Obituary on Swiss-Architects (in German) by Frank R. Werner, who describes Steinmann as "one of the most important thinkers, writers, teachers and builders of Swiss architecture."

Watch: The short film by Jessie Fischer made on the occasion of Steinmann receiving the Prix Meret Oppenheim 2016.
 

Kevin Lippert, 1959–2022

Born on January 20, 1959, Kevin Lippert was an accomplished pianist who discovered his career while a graduate student at Princeton University's School of Architecture in the early 1980s. Encouraged to read Letarouilly's compendium on Rome but frustrated at the lousy quality of a reprint, he compiled three volumes into one and had a thousand copies professionally printed. The book (still in print) became the first title of Lippert's Princeton Architectural Press, which he went forward with after architecture school instead of architectural practice. The "Classic Reprints" were a staple of PAPress from its beginning until Lippert's departure in 2019, but they were accompanied by considerably more books on contemporary architecture and architectural theory, including Steven Holl's Anchoring and subsequent monographs, Lebbeus Woods's OneFiveFour, and Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory, among many, many others. Lippert died on March 29, 2022, after complications from a second battle with brain cancer; he was 63.

Read: Obituary at CommonEdge by Mark Lamster, architecture critic at Dallas Morning News and former senior editor at Princeton Architectural Press. A remembrance by Steven Holl published at The Architect's Newspaper.

Watch: Lippert receiving the 2017 Arthur Ross Award for Publishing from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, which has worked with PAPress on the Classic Reprints series.
 

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