Ralph Rapson - Buildings and Projects

Buildings and Projects

Some of Rapson's most important projects include:

  • 1945: Case Study House No. 4, or "Greenbelt House" (part of the Case Study House program)
    • Esther McCoy famously wrote: "Rapson’s rendering of the house showed a helicopter hovering over the flat roof, as if the owner was coming home to the suburbs from his day at the office. His wife is waving to him. Where is she? Hanging out diapers in the drying yard. Rapson’s money was on the wrong machine."
    • The "Greenbelt House" was constructed in 1989 for an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
    • In recent years Rapson's firm developed a line of prefabricated modern houses called the Rapson Greenbelt, which grew out of a submission for the Dwell Home Design Invitational and are now available through a company called Wieler (http://wieler.com/homes/rapson-greenbelt/overview/).
  • 1945: "Rapson Rapid Rocker" for Knoll Furniture
  • 1954: United States Embassy, Diplomatstaden, Stockholm, Sweden
  • 1954: United States Embassy, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 1957: St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Edina, Minnesota
  • 1959: Prince of Peace Lutheran Church for the Deaf, St. Paul, Minnesota (demolished 2007)
  • 1962-73: Cedar Square West (now Riverside Plaza) housing complex, Minneapolis, Minnesota (a federally funded New-Town-in-Town)
  • 1963: Pillsbury House in Wayzata, Minnesota (demolished 1997)
  • 1963: Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota (demolished 2006)
  • 1969: St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, St. Paul Park, Minnesota
  • 1972: Rarig Center for the Performing Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Read more about this topic:  Ralph Rapson

Famous quotes containing the words buildings and/or projects:

    If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means—from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.
    Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)

    But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.
    Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)