Post Modernism and Pluralism 1965-Today : A & A Building by Paul Rudolph

Rudolph Hall, also known as the Yale Art and Architecture Building or the A & A Building, Paul Rudolph, (New Haven, CT); 1959 - 1963; Post Modernism and Pluralism 1965-Today

The Yale Art and Architecture Building (the "A&A Building") is one of the earliest and best known examples of Brutalist architecture in the United States. The building still houses Yale University's School of Architecture (it once also housed the School of Art) and is located in New Haven, Connecticut.

The Building

Designed by architect Paul Rudolph and completed in 1963, the complex building contains over thirty floor levels in its seven stories. The building is made of ribbed, bush-hammered, 'corduroy' concrete.

Monumental in its interlocking concrete forms, the building was designed to anchor a key corner site, culminating an architectural procession that includes Yale University Art Gallery, just across the street. The A&A’s massing spins off of four complex concrete towers, with a fifth vertical shaft set to one side to house the elevators and main ceremonial interior stair.

The building houses a great central, communal work space, surrounded by overlooks spanning four colossal piers. Rudolph expressed the focal center as stacked double-height spaces: an exhibition area, rising from the piano nobile and ringed by an administrative mezzanine, and directly above it, a soaring architectural drafting room, surveyed by a cast of a Classical statue of Minerva.

Changes and Restoration

A large fire on the night of June 14, 1969 caused extensive damage and during the repairs, many changes were made to Rudolph's original design.

Charles Moore, who openly disliked the building and succeeded Rudolph as Yale’s architecture chair, reconfigured the fire-gutted interior, obscuring and hacking up key spaces. Most egregiously, the double-height drafting room was split into two separate floors, each a warren of painting studios.

Some of the restorations included washing and patching the windows which have brought out the exterior interplay of light and shadow, and massive volumes and voids. The exterior concrete shell has been cleaned, ridding the fortress-like impressions associated with the building with over 40 years of grime. Inside, Rudolph’s vibrant “paprika” carpeting, a warm counterpoint to the A&A’s rough and ubiquitous concrete (inside and out), has been re-created, supplanting decades of mud-brown floor cover.

The Architect

Paul Rudolph (1918-1997) began his career in Sarasota, Florida, where he became a key figure in the Sarasota School of Architecture – a group of local architects who gained international attention during the mid-century for designing modernist homes suited to Florida’s tropical climate.

In 1958, Rudolph was appointed Dean of the Yale School of Architecture and began work on a large new building located on the university’s campus. Completed in 1963, the Yale Art & Architecture Building instantly became both a Modernist icon and a topic of controversy.

Rudolph left Yale in 1965 to practice in New York City. In the thirty years following his tenure at Yale, Rudolph created some of Modernism’s most unique and powerful designs.

Although Rudolph’s popularity in America waned while postmodernism dominated design and architectural discourse in the late 70’s and 80’s, he received commissions during this period of his career to work in Southeast Asia, where he built towers in Hong Kong, Jakarta, and Singapore.

Sources

Barber, Daniel A. "The Architecture of Paul Rudolph [By] Timothy M. Rohan." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 75, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 112-113.

Petit, Emmanuel. "The Architecture of Self-Reflection: Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building at Yale." Archithese, vol. 40, no. 3, 2010 May-June, pp. 48-53.