The career of eminent architect and educator Stanley Tigerman is the subject of a retrospective exhibition that opened at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery, in historic Paul Rudolph Hall, on August 22, 2011. Ceci n’est pas une rêverie*: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman, which remains on view through November 5, 2011. The exhibition celebrates Tigerman’s distinguished career with a diversity of original artworks, models, photographs, and archival documents, among other items. It is curated by Yale School of Architecture Associate Professor Emmanuel Petit. In January 2012, the exhibition will travel to the Graham Foundation’s Madlener House, in Chicago, and then onto the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. More information on the exhibition after the break.
A Chicago native and Yale alumnus, Stanley Tigerman (’60 B.Arch, ’61 M.Arch) has designed numerous buildings and museum installations throughout North America, Western Europe, and Asia, as well as a range of furniture, household items, and jewelry. His work, including that of his firm, Tigerman McCurry Architects, has received widespread critical acclaim and numerous awards, including seven AIA Honor Awards and more than 120 national and local awards for architecture and design.
Tigerman has additionally been a visiting professor and advisory-committee member at several schools of architecture, including Yale and Harvard, and was for eight years director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 1994, he and Eva Maddox co-founded ARCHEWORKS, a school and “socially oriented design laboratory” in Chicago.
The Exhibition
Ceci n’est pas une rêverie is installed thematically, grouping Tigerman’s projects according to motifs that resonate throughout his body of work: “utopia,” “allegory,” “death,” “humor,” “division,” “drift,” “yaleiana,” “identity,” and “(dis)order.” Highlights of the exhibition include models and sketches of such early and mid-career projects as the Five Polytechnic Institutes in Bangladesh (1966–75); the Urban Matrix proposal on Lake Michigan (1967–68); the Daisy House, in Porter, Indiana (1975–78); and Dante’s Bathroom Addition, an unbuilt, allegorical project for Kohler (1980), while more recent projects include the Commonwealth Edison Energy Museum, in Zion, Illinois (1987–90); the Park Lane Hotel in Kyoto (1990); the Berlin Wall project (1988); and the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, in Skokie (2000–2009).
In addition to his practice as an architect, Tigerman is a celebrated designer of furnishings and other objects. Ceci n’est pas une rêverie includes tableware designed for Swid Powell, along with designs for Cannon Fieldcrest, Alessi, and Cleto Munari. Original artworks by the architect include oil paintings from the “I Pledge Allegiance” series of the mid-1960s; a selection of “Architoons,” Tigerman’s cartoon-like drawings; and travel sketches from the 1970s onwards.
Archival material dating to Tigerman’s student days at Yale includes his Bachelor’s and Master’s theses, designed under Paul Rudolph at Yale. Finally, a new video interview with Tigerman and others, produced on the occasion of the exhibition by Karen Carter Lynch, offers a present-day perspective on the architect and his body of work.
Related Lectures
Ceci n’est pas une rêverie will be accompanied by two lectures. On August 25, Stanley Tigerman will give a talk titled “Displacement”; on September 1, Mr. Petit will share his insights as exhibition curator in a lecture titled “Scaffolds of Heaven: On Tigerman.” Both lectures are free and open to the public and take place in the auditorium of Paul Rudolph Hall at 6:30 pm.
Archives, Publications
The exhibition marks the 2012 transfer of Stanley Tigerman’s drawing archive to Yale University’s Manuscripts and Archives depository. There it will join the archives of Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen, and other important figures in the field.
Ceci n’est pas une rêverie launches the publication of Schlepping Through Ambivalence: Essays on an American Architectural Condition, the architect’s collected writings from 1964 to 2011, created on the occasion of the exhibition. Edited by Mr. Petit and published by Yale University Press, it will be available in October.
The opening of the exhibition also coincides with the release of Tigerman’s autobiography, Designing Bridges to Burn: Architectural Memoirs by Stanley Tigerman, published by ORO Editions.
The Yale School of Architecture Gallery is on the second floor of Paul Rudolph Hall, located on the corner of York and Chapel Streets (entrance on York), in downtown New Haven. Exhibitions at the Gallery are free and open to the public. Hours are Monday–Friday, 9 am–5 pm; Saturday, 10 am–5 pm. The Gallery is closed on Sunday.
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