OSCAR NITZCHKE, ARCHITECT
Edited by Gus Dudley

In such dramatic structures as the Johnson Wax Tower, General Motors Technical Center, Lever House, the Corning Glass Center, Equitable Life, the Prudential Buildings, (and many more), U.S. big business has financed the most revolutionary advances U.S. architects were ready to make. And now—ALCOA (1949–53). Possibly the most revolutionary advance of the postwar years. ALCOA, the completely sealed, completely engineered, completely controlled, completely finished "building package"—all neatly and elegantly wrapped in Oxford-gray aluminum.—Architectural Forum, November, 1983.

This volume begins with an illustrated chronology of projects complimenting Nitzchke’s biographical notes and an interview with C. Morey de Morand from 1980. Oscar Nitzchke worked in the offices of Le Corbusier and the Perret brothers and was a central participant in the modern movement in Paris in the early 1920s. The radical Maison de la Publicité on the Champs-Elysées, featured a six-storey open sky-sign framework suspended in front of the street facade which Kenneth Frampton called "a dematerialized, pyrotechnic, semiotic field . . . constantly active during the day and dynamically resplendent at night."

In 1938 Nitzchke came to the United States to become an associate professor at Yale University in the School of Architecture, joining Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz; and to work with Harrison and Fouilhoux as head of design research. Projects include the Bronx Zoo African Habitat, the Hotel Avila in Caracas, Time Life Building, participation in the United Nations Headquarters design, and Alcoa Headquarters, among others.

Essays by Joseph Abram, Kenneth Frampton, Isabelle Gournay, and George A. Dudley. Foreword by Bill N. Lacy. Afterword by John Hejduk. Supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Published to coincide with an exhibition in the Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery. Produced by The Cooper Union Center for Design & Typography, George Sadek, Director. Design by Mindy Lang.

NY: THE COOPER UNION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE & ART, 1985.
64 PAGES, 12 X 12
140 ILLUSTRATIONS, PLUS 24 COLOR PLATES BOUND INSIDE GATEFOLD .
SOFTCOVER, $50.00