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Raimund Abraham 1933-2010

Erik Schonsett

I just received word earlier this morning that Raimund Abraham, longtime professor at Cooper Union and one of my studio instructors at SCI_Arc passed away early this morning after giving a lecture at SCI_Arc last night. He was an amazing teacher and will be missed.

There will be a memorial service at SCI_Arc at 1pm on Friday 3/5/2010 in the main space.


http://www.sciarc.edu/news.php?id=1677

 
Mar 4, 10 4:15 pm

So tragic. Does anyone know if anybody else was in the car accident with him?

Mar 4, 10 5:00 pm  · 
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justavisual

incredibly tragic.

Mar 4, 10 5:47 pm  · 
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I'm sorry to hear that, he was an instructor of mine at Pratt in 1987. It was a car accident? He was an architect's architect.

Mar 4, 10 7:30 pm  · 
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b3tadine[sutures]

shocking. i never had him, but i heard stories about him from a professor that had him at Pratt, his work was provocative, and from the lecture i attended in nyc, he struck me as a passionate soul and i would have benefited greatly if i had him for studio. his drawings and ideas are sources of inspiration. both him and hejduk have profoundly changed how i feel about architecture.

Mar 4, 10 8:16 pm  · 
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b3tadine[sutures]
Mar 4, 10 8:31 pm  · 
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b3tadine[sutures]
Abraham

Q: I am interested in hearing your critique of the project at Ground Zero, as well as hearing your explanation for the design you proposed.

A: There was no hope from day one that the commercial world would really go for an architectural gesture that would be as radical as the event they claimed 9/11 was. Instead of saying, “Okay, now Mr. Silverstein, let’s get you some architects to build the most efficient commercial buildings there,” they tried to cover their intentions by saying, “Okay, now we need architecture.” From day one, the project was a disguised commercial site plan. It is very clear that when the pragmatic force starts to dominate that process, they will do whatever they want and then more or less declare the imprints of the two commercial towers as sacred because of the original event. I think that is blasphemy. It’s a fake…you see that’s what I called it at the beginning: the necessity of architecture to celebrate the sacredness; this is just the opposite. It’s fake sacredness.

What I made was a metaphoric proposal. I just had three gigantic blocks which formed three walls, parallel walls on the side, and then I chose the moments when the event occurred, when the first plane and the second plane hit the towers. Then, when the first tower collapsed and when the second tower collapsed, simply as moments of an event. I located the sun vertically and horizontally for each of those time frames. I cut through those three walls in that angle of the sun. So, in a way, you caught the moment, a moment without any kind of a narrative reference. When you would be standing in that cut, at that particular moment in time, the sun would hit you. The architecture would celebrate and essentially revive that space and time, which became synonymous.

Mar 4, 10 8:34 pm  · 
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aspect

could someone @ sci-are upload his last lecture on utube? truely missed him.

Mar 4, 10 10:14 pm  · 
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WonderK

That's just awful. My heart goes out to his family, colleagues and students. I'm sad that I never knew about him in life.

Mar 4, 10 10:34 pm  · 
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c.k.

what a terrible loss, I am sorry to not have taken his studio.

Mar 4, 10 11:40 pm  · 
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