Anna Bronovitskaya’s upcoming lecture is dedicated to life and practice of Wallace Harrison — an architect, who may not be remembered as a revolutionary mind, but nevertheless remains one of the most important figures in American architecture.
Wallace Harrison was a practitioner in the first instance, a «catcher of ideas» which he often implemented in the most complicated circumstances.
There would have been no New York of the Rockefeller Center and Lincoln Center without Harrison, and few individuals would have had the patience to complete the construction of the UN Headquarters as he did. His Trylon and Perisphere pavilion designed for the 1939 New York World’s Fair remains an iconic example of twentieth century architecture, although it hasn’t survived.
For the Russian architectural tradition, Harrison’s legacy is significant due to his interest in constructivist architecture, and the references he made to Konstantin Melnikov, Ivan Leonidov, and Yakov Chernikhov throughout his practice.
