Consistency is a key attribute of the architecture of Richard Meier. For more than 30 years, Meier has remained unwavering in his commitment to the exploration of architectural forms and the experience of interacting with these forms. Heavily indebted to Le Corbusier's "Five Points of a New Architecture," Meier’s approach to design is characterized by its complex vertical layering of spaces, its interpenetration of geometric forms (suggesting a kind of phenomenal transparency), and its proclivity for white, gridded surfaces. Although based mainly in North America, Meier became one of the late 20th century’s most prolific and successful architects of civic and public buildings. He is perhaps most famous for his design for the Getty Center (1997), a complex of galleries, libraries, and offices in Los Angeles, California. This building, reminiscent in its structure and scale to a large medieval monastery, is urban in its form but isolated from the city on a series of landscaped hills. Clad externally in a mixture of travertine and white enamel panels, the Getty Center is designed to be bathed in sunlight with crisp, sharp shadows modulating its forms. Yet the origins of this approach to design may be traced in Meier’s early designs for individual houses.

After working for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and then Marcel Breuer in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Meier set up his own architectural practice in New York in 1963 and began work on a series of private residences. The first of these to be completed, the Smith House (1967) in Darien, Connecticut, is a white, seemingly abstract, geometric composition of orthogonal planes, glass walls, and exposed staircases. Meier's Hoffman House (1967) and Saltzman House (1969), both in East Hampton, New York, and the house (1971) in Old Westbury, New York, all utilize the same language of intersecting cubic, rectilinear, and cylindrical volumes. The Douglas House (1973) in Harbor Springs, Michigan, represents the culmination of this closely related sequence of designs. Spectacularly sited on a steeply sloping site that overlooks Lake Michigan, the Douglas House stands in stark contrast to its natural surroundings. With its white walls, Cubist composition, faintly nautical character, and complex vertical section, the Douglas House is the quintessential early Meier building. Meier's later houses, including the Westchester House (1986) in Westchester County, New York, the Ackerberg House (1986) in Malibu, California, the Grotta House (1989) in Harding, New Jersey, and the Rachofsky House (1996) in Dallas, Texas, are closely related to these early designs yet also show a number of subtle differences. First, these later houses possess, in section and in elevation, more complex and fine-grained compositions of forms and materials. Whereas the early houses appeared to comprise a single major volume with various geometric additions and subtractions, the later houses comprise several distinct forms that intersect. Finally, the scale and spatial disposition of these later houses tend to suggest that they are fragments of urban or public buildings and spaces rather than simply domestic structures.

A few of Meier's early houses were featured, along with the work of four other architects, in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1969. In addition to Meier, this group of five architects included Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, and John Hejduk. All five were loosely connected through a common desire to extend the formal architectural languages of modernism and rationalism, particularly the geometric or purist works of Le Corbusier and Giuseppe Terragni. Known at the time as the “New York Five” or the “Whites” (because many of their buildings followed the modernist predilection for pure, white, geometric structures), they were later described by architectural critics as either neorationalists or late modernists.

Following his success as part of the “New York Five,” Meier began to complete a number of major public buildings over the following decades. Starting with the Monroe Development Center (1974) and the highly acclaimed Bronx Development Center (1977), both for the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, Meier experimented with the repetition of forms and with prefabricated aluminum cladding. However, it was in his design for the Atheneum (1979), a cultural and visitor center in New Harmony, Indiana, that Meier finally translated the white geometric language of his houses into a major public building. The Atheneum is a striking collage of sharp, geometric forms that rests serenely on its site but makes no attempt to blend into the landscape. Externally, the Atheneum is clad in white, porcelain enameled panels, and internally the major public spaces are lined with ramps and divided by stairs. Following the success of the Atheneum, Meier applied this same approach to the design of several influential museums in Europe and North America. The first of these, a clear relation of the Atheneum although with a more open circulation route, was the High Museum of Art (1983) in Atlanta, Georgia. This was followed by the Museum for the Decorative Arts (1985) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the Des Moines Art Center Addition (1984) in Des Moines, Iowa, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (1995) in Barcelona, Spain. For the Museum for the Decorative Arts, Meier abstracted architectural elements from the facade of an existing historic building and repeated them on his own design. Curiously, this symbolic recognition of the historic context remains too subtle for most visitors and too contrived for many architectural critics. Meier’s approach to design, like Le Corbusier’s, is potentially vulnerable to criticism when working in historic urban settings. For example, although Meier's Exhibition and Assembly Building (1993) in Ulm, Germany, provides a rich and permeable boundary to the public piazza in front of Ulm Cathedral, the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona seems strangely disconnected from its surrounding public spaces. Despite this criticism, Meier has had considerable success in several major European buildings, including the City Hall and Central Library (1995) in The Hague and the Canal + Headquarters (1992) in Paris. Both of these designs feature strong responses to the surrounding streetscape and urban fabric.

Michael J. Ostwald

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.

The Rizzoli three-volume set of Richard Meier's works (Vol. 1; Vol 2; Vol.3) spanning between 1984 and 1999 is the definitive reference work on Meier. Each of these three volumes contains a detailed bibliography of publications about his buildings for the relevant period as well as extracts from key writings. The introductions and mays from Joseph Rykwert and Kenneth Frampton in these volumes are among the most detailed criticisms and descriptions of Meier's works available. The 1996 Thames and Hudson volume presents a good overview of Meier's house designs.

Eisenman, Peter, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk. and Richard Meier, Five architects: Eisenman/ Graves / Gwathmey / Hejduk / Meier, New York: Oxford University Press, 1975

Klotz, Heinrich, and Waltraud Krase, New Museums in the Federal Republic of Germany, London; Academy, 1986

Montaner, Joseph ,and Jordi Oliveras, The Museums of the Last Generation, London; Academy, 1986

Selected Publications

Richard Meier Architect: 1964/1984, New York: Rizzoli, 1984 (With an introduction by Joseph Rykwert)

Richard Meier Architect Volume 2: 1985/1991, New York: Rizzoli. 1991 (With essays by Kenneth Frampion and Joseph Rykwent)

Richard Meier Architect Volume 3: 1992/1999. New York: Rizzoli,1999 (With essays by Kenneth Frampion and Joseph Rykwent)

Richard Meier the architect as designer and artist

Richard Meier Houses, London: Thames and Hudson. 1996

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