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YALE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION EXPLORES WORK OF DISTINGUISHED ARCHITECT STANLEY TIGERMAN

Opens August 22, 2011; inaugurates School of Architecture exhibition program for 2011-2012 academic year

The career of eminent architect and educator Stanley Tigerman is the subject of a retrospective exhibition opening at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery, in historic Paul Rudolph Hall, on August 22, 2011. Ceci n’est pas une rêverie*: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman, which remains on view through November 5, 2011, celebrates Tigerman’s distinguished career with a diversity of original artworks, models, photographs, and archival documents, among other items. It is curated by Yale School of Architecture Associate Professor Emmanuel Petit.

A Chicago native and Yale alumnus, Stanley Tigerman (’60 B.Arch, ’61 M.Arch) has designed numerous buildings and museum installations throughout North America, Western Europe, and Asia, as well as a range of furniture, household items, and jewelry. His work, including that of his firm, Tigerman McCurry Architects, has received widespread critical acclaim and numerous awards, including seven AIA Honor Awards and more than 120 national and local awards for architecture and design.

Tigerman has additionally been a visiting professor and advisory-committee member at several schools of architecture, including Yale and Harvard, and was for eight years director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 1994, he and Eva Maddox co-founded ARCHEWORKS, a school and “socially oriented design laboratory” in Chicago.

Ceci n’est pas une rêverie is installed thematically, grouping Tigerman’s projects according to motifs that resonate throughout his body of work: “utopia,” “allegory,” “death,” “humor,” “division,” “drift,” “yaleiana,” “identity,” and “(dis)order.” Highlights of the exhibition include models and sketches of such early and mid-career projects as the Five Polytechnic Institutes in Bangladesh (1966–75); the Urban Matrix proposal on Lake Michigan (1967–68); the Daisy House, in Porter, Indiana (1975–78); and Dante’s Bathroom Addition, an unbuilt, allegorical project for Kohler (1980), while more recent projects include the Commonwealth Edison Energy Museum, in Zion, Illinois (1987–90); the Park Lane Hotel in Kyoto (1990); the Berlin Wall project (1988); and the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, in Skokie (2000–2009).

In addition to his practice as an architect, Tigerman is a celebrated designer of furnishings and other objects. Ceci n’est pas une rêverie includes tableware designed for Swid Powell, along with designs for Cannon Fieldcrest, Alessi, and Cleto Munari. Original artworks by the architect include oil paintings from the “I Pledge Allegiance” series of the mid-1960s; a selection of “Architoons,” Tigerman’s cartoon-like drawings; and travel sketches from the 1970s onwards.

Archival material dating to Tigerman’s student days at Yale includes his Bachelor’s and Master’s theses, designed under Paul Rudolph at Yale. Finally, a new video interview with Tigerman and others, produced on the occasion of the exhibition by Karen Carter Lynch, offers a present-day perspective on the architect and his body of work.

Yale School of Architecture Gallery
The Yale School of Architecture Gallery is on the second floor of Paul Rudolph Hall, located on the corner of York and Chapel Streets (entrance on York), in downtown New Haven. Exhibitions at the Gallery are free and open to the public. Hours are Monday–Friday, 9 am–5 pm; Saturday, 10 am–5 pm. The Gallery is closed on Sunday. For additional public information, visit www.architecture.yale.edu and click on “events.”

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