Determined, Driven, Forceful, Perceptive,
Resourceful, Emotional, Intuitive, Loyal,
Powerful, Passionate, Exciting, Magnetic,
Jealous, Resentful, Compulsive, Obsessive,
Manipulative, Secretive, Obstinate
As a Scorpio, Morris Lapidus was interested in the architecture
of pleasure. His architecture channelled the dreams and desires
of working-class immigrants who had worked their way up into
middle-class affluence. Their new-found wealth enabled them
to afford glamorous 1950s' cars and candle-lit dinners in nice
restaurants and luxurious vacations in exotic tropical climates.
Morris Lapidus began his career designing mundane retail
stores, which he saw as a good way to earn a living.
He was fascinated by the shop facade, which he designed to
function as a glamour lighting sign. Venturi acknowledged his
use of signage as a principal feature of his architecture.
Lapidus was sensitive to popular culture. As a Russian
Jewish immigrant he identified with the dreams of Eastern
Europeans, newly arrived in the materialist American land
of plenty, channelling their aristocratic fantasies of Versailles
and French châteaux. In fact his major Miami hotel is called
the Fontainebleau.
Lapidus came out of the 1950s where Liberace's TV sets, which
featured elaborate candelabras placed on a grand piano,
were matched only by the Las Vegas stage costumes of Liberace's
friend Elvis Presley. Lapidus manifested all the decadence of
Hollywood film sets and the Las Vegas stage show in emotive,
baroque architectural interiors. Lapidus even went as far as
to embellish his columns, surrounding them with elliptical
vitrines and glass display cabinets.
Like the commercial signs of Vegas, Lapidus's work features
bright, colourful lighting and has the fluidity of water, very
much a Miami Beach milieu. His beachfront hotels also used
water in the biomorphic kidney-shaped forms of swimming
pools placed in oversized, amusement-park-like terraces facing
the ocean. These terraces use curving baroque forms and
coloured stone surfaces, which relate his work to Burle Marx's
"garden architecture/terraces" for Oscar Niemeyer. An architect
like Rem Koolhaas (also a Scorpio) relates his work to Niemeyer
and Harrison in the desire to move beyond the minimalism
of De Stijl and implicit Calvinist tendencies towards more
curvaceous forms. Similarities between Niemeyer and Lapidus
lie in their hedonist tendencies and their longevity: Lapidus died
at 98, and Niemeyer is now nearly 100. Both use organic forms
within their architecture along with a tropical colour palette.
Lapidus used long, flowing, ever-changing corridors, often
connecting floors with large, open, aristocratic spiral
staircases. He broke all the rules. He used coloured linoleum
as the material for wall murals due to its glamorous patterns.
The 1950s were typically a period of plastics, where the
possibilities of this material replaced wood. He used curving
glass brick walls as shop facades.
Seen as a commercial "developer" creating an ersatz
"European" environment for naïve Americans, his work is now
starting to be appreciated by a larger and more discerning
younger generation.
One of the most influential
conceptual artists of his time,
Dan Graham currently lives
in New York.
Jessica Russell studied
and practiced art in
Melbourne. She currently
studies architecture at The
Cooper Union in New York.
Scorpio
Hedonistic and long-lived, Scorpio Morris Lapidus indulged in organic forms and tropical palettes.
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- Dan Graham,Jessica Russell
- 07 November 2011
- New York