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MAS Context Spring Talks 2023

Victor Lundy at 100

February 1, 2023 at 6PM

Architect Victor Lundy turned 100 years old on February 1, 2023. To commemorate this significant date and to discuss the relevance of Victor Lundy’s work, MAS Context organized an online event on that day with presentations by Donna Kacmar and Whitney Moon.

Contributors

American architect Victor Lundy’s artistic talents from an early age influenced both his Beaux Arts and Bauhaus architectural training. His architectural works such as the Nokomis Presbyterian Drive-In Church, the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, St. Paul's Lutheran Fellowship Hall, and Warm Mineral Springs Motel showcase Lundy’s exploration of structural systems. The I Miller Salon, Singer Showroom, and IBM Building reflect how he used materials to create evocative spaces. The “space flowers” at the at World’s Fair in 1964–1965 and his traveling exhibition hall for the US Atomic Energy Commission represent his search for the overlap between form and efficiency in pneumatic structures. Lundy’s US Tax Court building and US Embassy in Sri Lanka were both a study in patience and determination.

During this talk, Donna Kacmar, FAIA, a Professor at the University of Houston and the principal of Architect Works, PLLC, as well as the editor and author of several chapters in the book Victor Lundy: Artist Architect, provided an overview of Lundy’s career. Whitney Moon, Associate Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Ph.D. Program in Architecture at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, discussed the pneumatic structures of Lundy.

Mas event 2023 victor lundy at 100 book

You can purchase the book from its publisher or your local bookstore:

→ Victor Lundy: Artist Architect (Princeton Architectural Press, 2018).

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Perspective projection, Church of the Resurrection, East Harlem, New York, Victor Lundy, 1961. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

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Rendering, First Unitarian Church, Westport, Connecticut, Victor Lundy, 1959. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

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Rendering, First Unitarian Church, Westport, Connecticut, Victor Lundy, 1959. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

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Exterior, Alta Vista Elementary School, Sarasota, Florida, Victor Lundy, 1956. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

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Rendering, IBM Garden State office building, Garden State Parkway, Cranford, New Jersey, Victor Lundy, 1963. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

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Section, Refreshment stand, 1964-65 N.Y. World’s Fair, for the Brass Rail Food Service Organization Inc., Victor Lundy, 1963. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

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Rendering, St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Sarasota, Florida, Victor Lundy, 1959. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

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Contributor Bios

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Donna Kacmar

Donna Kacmar, FAIA, is an architect and the principal of Houston-based Architect Works, PLLC. She was educated at Texas A&M University and graduated with a Bachelor of Environmental Design in 1988 and a Master of Architecture in 1992. Donna is a National American Institute of Architects 2004 Young Architects Award recipient and was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 2009. She has taught at Rice University and Texas A&M University, and is currently a Professor at the University of Houston where she teaches architecture design studio. Her Fisher Street House, a small 544-square-foot dwelling, received a 2013 AIA Houston Design Award and led to her first book, titled BIG little house (Routledge, 2015). Her most recent book, on the work of Victor Lundy, was published in 2018 by Princeton Architectural Press. She is currently working on a book titled Big Little Hotel to be published in March 2023.

Whitney Moon

Whitney Moon is Associate Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Ph.D. Program in Architecture at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she teaches history, theory, and design. Her research interests reside in twentieth and twenty-first century art and architecture, with an emphasis on theatricality, performance, and ephemeral works. Specifically, Moon examines architectural objects, installations, and exhibitions and their relationship to the social, political, economic, and environmental conditions that shape them. Currently, she is working on a collection of essays about the rise and fall of pneumatic architecture in the 1960s and 70s entitled “Who Let the Air Out?," as well as co-curating a forthcoming exhibition on the architectural works of Willis & Lillian Leenhouts. Moon’s recent writings have been published in e-flux, JAE, LOG, PRAXIS, Room One Thousand, The Other Architect, Possible Mediums, and Constructing Building Enclosures. A registered architect in California and Wisconsin, Moon earned her Ph.D. in Architectural History & Theory from University of California, Los Angeles, and B.Arch from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.