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Aldo Giurgola Dead at Age 95
“He left an indelible, unforgettable legacy on the architecture of our times,” states Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, Museum President, The Chicago Athenaeum.
Romaldo "Aldo" Giurgola (1920 – 2016) was an Italian academic, architect, professor, and author. He was born in Rome, in 1920. After service in the Italian armed forces during World War II, he was educated at the Sapienza University of Rome. He studied architecture at the University of Rome, completing the equivalent of a B.Arch. with honors in 1949.
That same year, he moved to the United States and received a master's degree in architecture from Columbia University. He moved to Canberra, Australia, in the 1980s. He was a partner in the Philadelphia firm Mitchell/Giurgola Architects from 1958 until his death this May.
“He left an indelible, unforgettable legacy on the architecture of our times,” states Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, Museum President, The Chicago Athenaeum.
“I had the great fortune to meet him on many occasions and I was continuously touched by his great sense of empathy, compassion, and leveled humility and by his enormous perspective on the world at large.”
“He had a brilliant understanding of who we are as a people, and who were are as a world culture as a whole,” continues Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine.
Mitchell/Giurgola, one of the most important firms of the "Philadelphia School," was founded in the city by Ehrman B. Mitchell and Romaldo Giurgola in 1958. The firm has been committed to the belief that architecture is capable of enriching the daily experience. The practice is a humanist one dedicated to the creation of comfortable, accommodating, enlightened, and efficient spaces appropriate to their function.
The first important building of Mitchell/Giurgola was the Wright Brothers National Memorial Visitor Center (1957) for the U.S. National Park Service, a building that brought them national attention for three reasons. It was one of the first NPS visitors' centers that became a building type unto itself. The design was consonant with a certain aesthetic preoccupation with aviation, flight, technology and space travel of the time, the same zeitgeist that produced Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was seen as a break with strict modernist tenets in its respect for the site and the program, as opposed to what Giurgola called "the imposition of abstract forms."
In Philadelphia, Giurgola had formed a relationship with Louis Kahn, who held similar views. In April 1961 the architectural critic Jan Rowan grouped Giurgola, Kahn, Robert Venturi, George Qualls, Robert Geddes and others, into "The Philadelphia." Giurgola published several books on Kahn's work and philosophy.
Giurgola was invited to join the panel of judges for the 1980 international competition for the landmark Australian Parliament House in Canberra. Instead, he chose to enter the competition. After winning, Giurgola moved to Australia and practiced there. He adopted Australian citizenship in January 2000.
The firm Mitchell/Giurgola has won numerous American Architecture Awards from The Chicago Athenaeum.
Photo Credit: Aldo Giurgola in front of his design for the Parliament House in Canberra, Australia.
From the Archives of The Chicago Athenaeum.
From the Archives of The Chicago Athenaeum.
