Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

[MUSIC PLAYING] GARY EICHTEN: And good afternoon. Welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Gary Eichten. One of Minnesota's most influential architects celebrated his 91st birthday this week. Ralph Rapson is probably best known for designing the original Guthrie Theater, shaped two generations of architects as the dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota.

This hour is part of our continuing Voices of Minnesota interview series. We're going to hear from Ralph Rapson. We're also going to hear from his colleague and one-time student, noted architect, Leonard Parker.

Mr Parker is the man behind such buildings as the Minneapolis Convention Center, the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute, and it so happens the studios of Minnesota Public Radio here in St. Paul. Here with his special architecture edition of Voices of Minnesota is Minnesota Public Radio's Marianne Combs.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARIANNE COMBS: At the age of 91, architect Ralph Rapson is still working hard.

RALPH RAPSON: I hope I'm working right up to the last day. It ain't work, it's fun.

MARIANNE COMBS: Rapson's Guthrie Theater is slated for demolition just as his designs from the '40s, '50s, and '60s are finding a new audience. His former student, Leonard Parker, is a spry 83. Over the past 50 years, Parker has designed close to 900 structures around the world, including his own home.

LEONARD PARKER: Creation is a wonderful thing. At least for me, it was the dominating aspect of my being.

MARIANNE COMBS: I'm Marianne Combs. Today on Voices of Minnesota conversations with Minnesota architects, Ralph Rapson and Leonard Parker.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Architect Ralph Rapson is certainly keeping busy. At the age of 91, he still works at least 40 hours a week. His office is located in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, not far from the colorful, high-rise apartment complex he designed in the 1960s.

An innocuous black door between a futon gallery and an East African restaurant on Cedar Avenue leads upstairs to Rapson Architects Incorporated. There he, his son Toby, and two other architects work away at a variety of projects.

Rapson still does all his drawing by hand, but the others use computers. Currently, they're designing furniture, low-income housing, and an apartment complex. Rapson says he's in the unique position of living long enough to see his work come back into fashion. He prides himself on having remained true to his original vision over the past 70 years.

RALPH RAPSON: I have not been swayed ever by current fashions or trends. And back in 1944, thereabouts, I designed something called the Greenbelt House. It was part of the magazine Arts and Architecture case study house program.

For a number of reasons my house never got built. But some 40 years later the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA had an exhibition, a revival of the case study house program, and they reproduced my Greenbelt House. As I looked at that some 40 years later and in part I was interested, would I do it exactly the same? And believe me, there wasn't one single thing I wanted to change to bring it up to date or anything.

MARIANNE COMBS: Rapson's favorite project at the moment is a glass conservatory he designed for the University of Minnesota's Arboretum. He says it's the length of a football field and looks like a pile of truncated diamonds.

Rapson's energy and industry are misleading. He readily admits he's on blood thinners, uses a pacemaker, and the arteries to his brain are slowly clogging. At this point, his doctors say it's too risky to operate.

RALPH RAPSON: They can't. They don't want to do anything at my age. And any kind of stents or anything might be fatal. So my attitude is, well, why not just go on living doing the things I enjoy and live as full as I can, and who knows what's going to happen? I hope I'm working right up to the last day. It ain't work, it's fun.

MARIANNE COMBS: Rapson was born in Alma, Michigan, into what he describes as an average Midwest family. His father worked for a trucking company. His mother died when he was just eight, so his sister took care of the family until she married.

Rapson's two older brothers weren't much interested in babysitting, so he learned to be independent at an early age. As the youngest, he wore hand-me-down clothes and shoes. Rapson says he had no early inkling that he would become an architect.

RALPH RAPSON: I was always interested in drawing. I entered all kinds of little competitions. And I suppose just along the way I began to discover something called architecture, but I wasn't strongly motivated at an early age. I'm afraid like so many have been. But in a way, I suppose I even wanted to be an artist, but people said, oh, you can't make a living at that.

MARIANNE COMBS: Robson delivered papers throughout high school and then began painting signs for grocery stores and other businesses that wanted advertising. And he was an enthusiastic athlete. All of this he did with just one hand.

Robson was born with a right arm that wasn't completely formed. It was amputated at the elbow when he was a small child. But his left hand proved more than adequate and Robson didn't let the handicap slow him down. He learned about architecture in his art classes and it became a new outlet for his love of drawing.

He enrolled in the University of Michigan's School of Architecture. It was the 1930s. Modernism was all the rage in Europe, but it had yet to make its way to American schools.

RALPH RAPSON: We didn't have what was generally known as a final thesis project, but we had a major project in our last years. And in the process, I was just discovering the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier and some of the foreign work.

It wasn't normally accepted or even published in the journals, but I was beginning to discover this. And one of my favorite idols was Le Corbusier, who was quite well known of course as an innovative architect. But his drawings were strictly line drawings, black and white. In our normal architectural bazaar, they were highly rendered projects with color and so on.

And I remember developing my project and it was all drawn in black and white. And Professor Eberhard, the chief critic, came around and shook his head and said, "No, no. This will never do. This will never do."

And it was fairly common in those days. The student would sit down and the professor would do a little bit of work and say, here, carry on. Well, he started rendering my project in watercolors. And I just was getting more and more impatient. And finally, he turned it over to me and said, "Now continue."

I fretted and stewed about this because I was so in love with my black-and-white drawing. And finally, with the encouragement of some of my classmates, I took the boards over to the sink and washed out all of the watercolor, and then continued on. And I remember at the presentation I was really quite fearful what the reaction would be of not only that professor but the other faculty.

But I proceeded. And as a matter of fact, I did it very well on the grades. But the old boy's finger or eyebrows were sort of shaking up and down and he was not at all happy with.

MARIANNE COMBS: Why was it important to you to keep it black and white?

RALPH RAPSON: Well, I was discovering that there was something called contemporary or modern architecture. And most of my colleagues were all doing fairly traditional things. And all the way through school, I tried to break out of this system. Most of the time I did, except maybe in my first, maybe or second year.

But I finally then started developing my own concepts. The tradition was that the critic often would sketch something out and the student was often more or less expected to develop along those particular lines and I refused to do that.

MARIANNE COMBS: You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Marianne Combs.

Architect Ralph Rapson is often credited with humanizing modern architecture. In addition to the Bauhaus movement, Rapson's work was influenced early on by the master of the prairie style, Frank Lloyd Wright, and by the Scandinavian father-son architects, Eero and Eliel Saarinen.

Rapson has written what he calls The Ten Commandments of Architecture, a more holistic approach to conceiving and designing a building. Rapson believed modern design was not breaking with tradition but simply the natural outgrowth of civilization, an expression of the times.

RALPH RAPSON: I'm very much of what I like to label a functionalist. I believe very strongly that mankind is the yardstick in which we're working and that somehow or the other one must satisfy the aims, the physical, the aspirations, the hopes, and all of these people when you're designing buildings. That became very much a part of my work. And I feel if you can draw the human figure, you can draw almost anything.

So in all my drawings, you will find people-- the way a person sits in a chair or relaxes or the way people move through space or around buildings and so on. They're not just, as we call them, scale figures to give scale to the buildings, but to say something about how I expect people are going to react, how they're going to utilize, how they're going to live in these spaces.

MARIANNE COMBS: Yeah. Some of the drawings that I've seen, the renderings, these people are very dynamic and filled with energy. There's somebody out in the yard sort of their legs are spread eagle as they're picking flowers from the garden and somebody else's reclining out on a sort of chaise longue out in the yard. And these are people who are really living. They're not just wandering through and looking out a window somewhere.

RALPH RAPSON: That's entirely right. I hope to have a better understanding of the building of what I think or what I think they would be doing in the spaces.

MARIANNE COMBS: What is the responsibility of an architect? It just seems to me that architects are such unusual-- not creatures, but it's such an unusual profession because it really-- it seems like the way you look at the world is different.

You're really looking at design. And it's not just the building, it's how the building interacts with its external world as well as its internal world and how a human interacts with the building. As you said, it's all modeled to the human form. So what do you see as your responsibilities as an architect?

[SIGH]

RALPH RAPSON: Well, I think we have a real responsibility to revere and to contribute to some of the beauty and the order that is found inherently in nature. And that means obviously then relating totally to any given assignment.

I think you must find out everything possible that one is able about not only the site and the ecology and the client and so on but what past civilizations have done. How does this relate to historical continuity? It really is a total responsibility.

MARIANNE COMBS: Rapson graduated during the Great Depression at a time when there was no money for building, but there were always design contests and Robson excelled at them. He beat out contemporaries such as Louis Kahn and Philip Johnson. He developed a reputation for speed, creativity, and an artistic flair that was missing from other renderings.

Now, to focus on the drawing a little bit and what I'm learning about architecture as I interview different architects, it seems sometimes the architecture really is the rendering because some of these never end up being built. So really the architecture or the artistic process, the real product is in some ways the plan.

RALPH RAPSON: The process.

MARIANNE COMBS: In the process. And it seems from what I understand of your career, do you ever think about how just having your left hand may have actually helped you in some ways to concentrate your skills as opposed to building models you were focusing more on the drawing?

RALPH RAPSON: Well, certainly having only one hand-- I can make models. I've made many models, but I'm not so great at it. And we use models all the time to study buildings and projects. But also I felt that by drawing I could do in much shorter time.

I could describe a project or an idea much quicker, much faster than building a model. So my skill at drawing certainly was in part just because I was somewhat limited. And I also developed speed.

MARIANNE COMBS: And you were really the first to sort of blow out the perspective of your drawings. You attacked buildings from every angle instead of the front-on traditional rendering of a building.

RALPH RAPSON: Well, it's simply that I think I found-- I realized that I could solve many of the spatial problems rather more quickly and able to convince myself and to demonstrate to others what I had in mind. So it is through that skill, if you will.

I don't usually construct a drawing. In the old days, we used to lay out constructed drawings that would show a perspective or something in three dimension. I've become able to do these rapidly freehand.

As a matter of fact, I disagree with most of the perspectives that are done on the computer these days because they're sometimes too accurate. They don't really show the feeling of a space as much as-- sometimes when you take certain liberties with the widths and proportions and that sort of thing.

MARIANNE COMBS: So the literal space versus how we interpret a space when we're in it.

RALPH RAPSON: May be quite different, yes. And at least the impression or the illusion that you get. That has been a characteristic of a lot of my work.

MARIANNE COMBS: You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Marianne Combs. Coming up in the second half hour, we hear from Ralph Rapson's student and contemporary, architect Leonard Parker.

Ralph Rapson went from the University of Michigan to Cranbrook Academy of Arts. There he met young architect Florence Schust. Schust went on to marry furniture manufacturer Hans Knoll, and soon they hired Rapson on to design a new line. During that time, Rapson served as one of the leaders of the New Bauhaus School in Chicago and designed experimental concept houses such as the Cave House and the Fabric House.

Rapson got his big career break while teaching at MIT at the end of World War II. The US State Department was eager to build embassies throughout Europe. It chose Rapson, along with his friend John van der Meulen, to help design its new image abroad-- modern, open, and innovative.

RALPH RAPSON: A new attitude was taking place that it wasn't just an ambassador's house and a small crew, but there was a need for-- or maybe there wasn't a need but there was a desire that whole compounds would be set up so that most of our embassies would employ 300, 400 people.

And I must say that my notion of the American embassies and it's quite different than today-- my notion and apparently some of the people in Washington would agree that they should be open and inviting, that they should say this is America, the land of opportunity and freedom.

And so our buildings are very glassy, very open. Now, of course, the embassies have become probably in great part due to our uninspired world leadership, they have to be fortresses. They have to be highly protected and et cetera.

I remember having a great argument with the State Department. The people coming for visas normally would come in through a back door somehow or other. I insisted that these be upfront. If they were going to become American citizens applying for American visas that they should be treated in such a manner. So our whole idea was a very open, modern, contemporary statement of a country that's exciting and new.

And we didn't attempt to-- some architects when they got to do embassies tried to ape local building customs and tried to make a modern building look like a pyramid. But we didn't have that attitude. We still maintain that these should be statements about America-- modern, contemporary, open, free-wheeling in a sense.

That's strange enough we-- well, one of the advantages of working there was that we were supposed to send drawings all back to Washington for the State Department to critique. But this was before air flight, basically. And by the time we sent the things over and they got back to us, it was just too late. They couldn't.

And so we-- oh, we had restraints. Of course, we had budget restraints and functional requirements. And there was some security, of course, but if there's anything wrong with the buildings, you could point to myself and John because we call all the shots.

MARIANNE COMBS: In 1954, the University of Minnesota invited Rapson to become the dean of its school of architecture. Rapson took the original school and gave it an international reputation, inviting figures such as Buckminster Fuller and Frank Lloyd Wright to visit.

He encouraged working architects to join the faculty while continuing their practices, something he did as well. As a result, his students were equally trained in both the academic and practical aspects of design.

During his 30 years of leadership, U of M students consistently won prizes and went on to work with reputable firms. Then in 1960, Rapson was hired by Sir Tyrone Guthrie to design a theater in Minneapolis. Guthrie and Rapson did not see eye to eye on the project.

RALPH RAPSON: When I was working with Tony Guthrie, he described what he thought his architect should do. This was at the very first meeting with him. And it became rather obvious to me that what he was talking about was someone to draw up his ideas.

I was brash enough not knowing that I was speaking to the foremost repertory theater director. So I proceeded to tell him what I thought my responsibilities were.

MARIANNE COMBS: Rapson and Guthrie's heated arguments are legend. Each was an artistic visionary, but they had competing visions. Ultimately, they found a compromise, and Rapson designed a building that combined elements of both classic theater and great modern design.

The Guthrie Theater was a success, but it cost Rapson his reputation. Word spread he was difficult to work with. Some say it was both the pinnacle of his career and his downfall.

Now the Guthrie Theater is slated for demolition to make way for the final stage of the Walker Art Center's expansion. A new Guthrie Theater going up on the Minneapolis riverfront was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel.

RALPH RAPSON: I don't know that it was necessary to the pinnacle of-- I think whatever I'm doing at the present time is the pinnacle. And it also of course was a great disappointment. Not personally, but I think from the standpoint of losing something that had become such a strong cultural value to the entire community.

The Guthrie held so many wonderful memories for people. And I'm not one of these people that thinks that every building has to remain forever. Times change, conditions change, circumstances change. We must move on. But so many people have told me what wonderful times they've had coming and going to the Guthrie that I think it's a terrible loss.

And I to this day don't quite understand why the Walker people could not have integrated that into their ongoing programs. But people have asked me, does it hurt? Yes, it hurts. It's like losing a child, if you will.

MARIANNE COMBS: Rapson says when people ask him about how he's handling the loss of the Guthrie, he tells them a story. A man and a donkey are both growing old and stubborn. The man finally decides to rid himself of the donkey.

So late one evening he digs a hole, shoves in the donkey, and then proceeds to shovel the dirt back in on top of him. But by this time, it's grown dark. So the man doesn't see that with each toss of the shovel, the donkey simply shakes off the dirt and stamps it down underneath him. Finally, the ground is high enough that he can climb out of the hole.

RALPH RAPSON: And the moral to this story is that as dirt or as hard things are thrown at you and you have disappointments and all of this, you simply shake them off, you stamp them down, and you move on to higher ground. Move on to higher grounds, shake it off, move on to higher ground.

So in a sense, I've told people that in a sense, that's my feeling about the Guthrie. Great loss that it is both to myself, maybe in the community, you shake it off, you move on to higher grounds.

MARIANNE COMBS: What do you think of the new Guthrie?

RALPH RAPSON: I confess I have not been in it. I've been on the outside, of course, and it's dramatic. And I marvel in a way that the original Guthrie cost about 2 million. This is, what? 102 million or something like that. Of course, we've had inflation and changing times, but budgets that are undreamed of in my experience so that they're able to do go way beyond.

One of the understandings that was made to me was that the new building, that the major thrust house should be similar to the existing Guthrie. I understand that there is some continuity there, but I would not expect any architect worth his salt to reproduce exactly.

As I say, I don't understand. I haven't gone in the building, but it seems to me that the public circulation is probably going to be quite dramatic and quite dynamic. But it all seems to me rather forced.

I was not asked to do a design, but I did do a design. My concept was all of the public circulation was on the riverfront and the theaters which are introvert would be behind the backs on the town side.

MARIANNE COMBS: Architect Ralph Rapson speaking in his Minneapolis office. Rapson says only his son Toby has seen his design for the new Guthrie. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Marianne Combs.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Sitting in Leonard Parker's home in Minnetonka, you can see the influence Ralph Rapson had on his work. His home is filled with light. Two-story windows gaze out into the woods and a nearby lake. A white fireplace chimney rises up to the ceiling. The living room is simultaneously expansive and cozy. Parker first studied under Rapson while getting his advanced degree at MIT.

Then later, he joined him on the U Of m faculty. Over the last half-century, Parker has designed close to 900 structures, including the Humphrey Institute, the Minneapolis Convention Center, and the Minnesota Judicial Center. To his knowledge, not a single one of his buildings has been torn down.

Parker recently sold his architectural firm. Now at the age of 83, he works at his son's firm. Parker is a cheerful man, grateful for the life he's lived. And no wonder his life is a series of adventures strung together, beginning with his birth in Poland in 1922 as his parents were making their way out of the country.

LEONARD PARKER: My parents were emigrating to the United States in a wagon. There was me and my brother who was two years old, and I was still in my mother's stomach. And we run a horse and wagon thing. And my mother started having labor pains and this is in the middle of winter.

And so my dad stopped at a farmhouse and went up and asked the Polish farm lady whether they could have shelter and if she could find a midwife for him to deliver my mother. So she laid out a blanket in this barn right in front of this huge door. This is my mother telling me all this now.

And they went to find a midwife. And while they were gone, my mother started delivering me and my grandma helped her. My two-year-old brother was watching it. So I was born in a barn in the middle of January on a farm outside of Warsaw, Poland.

MARIANNE COMBS: Parker's family emigrated to the US and eventually settled down in Milwaukee.

LEONARD PARKER: My father ended up owning a haberdashery. He was trained as a tailor and he used to tell me that he did the clothes for the Tsar of Russia and that he rode a white horse with the Cossacks. So I lie very naturally.

[LAUGHTER]

MARIANNE COMBS: All right. So this entire interview should be taken under advisement. Got it.

[LAUGHTER]

LEONARD PARKER: Now that I've admitted, I got to be honest.

[LAUGHTER]

MARIANNE COMBS: So your father worked-- had a haberdashery.

LEONARD PARKER: Had a haberdashery in Milwaukee.

MARIANNE COMBS: And what did you do as a kid growing up? I mean, you were interested in-- you were going to school, obviously, but did you work with your father at all? What were you doing on the side?

LEONARD PARKER: No. I sold newspapers.

[LAUGHTER]

No, as a matter of fact, I'm a singer. I was a boy soprano in WTMJ in Milwaukee for three summers until my voice changed. They had me waiting at the studio while the Milwaukee Brewers were playing baseball. And whenever the game would break in the afternoon like five minutes after 4:00 and then they have a 50-minute interview, they have new intervals, they have new programming.

So whenever it break they would introduce me and I would sing songs. And they went like, and now the Klinker Candy Company bring you Pinkie Adair. They changed my name. That sensational boy soprano brought to you by Klinker Candy Company, makers of Whiz candy bars. And now Pinkie will sing "My Mom" or "Red Sails in the Sunset" or "Laughing Irish Eyes."

And I had a whole entourage of songs. I was also a boy cantor. And people used to come from all over the city to watch me conduct services.

MARIANNE COMBS: Parker fell in love with architecture at an early age when his friend Abe convinced him to pay a visit to the Johnson Wax headquarters, newly designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

LEONARD PARKER: Abe was a good friend of mine. We both were on the wrestling team and we both played basketball a lot. And so he said he's going to ride his bike to Racine the next morning, which is about 45 miles from Milwaukee, and that I want to come along. And I said, "Yeah, that'd be great. My mom won't let me go."

He said, "Don't tell her you're going to Racine. Just tell her you're going for a bike ride with Abe." So I did. And she said OK. So we got up, I don't know, 4 o'clock in the morning, and we started out to Racine. We got there about 10 o'clock.

And we drove up-- he knew where he was going. He drove right up to the building. I'd never seen a building like that. I said, "Wow, that's really something." And we walked in and it's a wonderful space.

I don't know if you know the big-- and it's ringed all with tubular glass all around the edge of it. I've never seen a building like that before. So I was so impressed with it.

MARIANNE COMBS: 14-year-old Leonard Parker and his friend Abe found the building engineer who gave them a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's handiwork.

LEONARD PARKER: I thought he was about 80 years old. He probably was 50. [LAUGHS] And he took us around and he talked about Mr. Wright with such deference. Mr. Wright and a T-shaped columns and how they experimented and loaded it and all this and it didn't collapse. And how Mr. Wright wanted to do this and Mr. Wright did that.

And I thought, God, that is great to be treated with such respect and deference. I want to be one of those people. So I made up my mind as a result of that trip that I was going to be an architect.

MARIANNE COMBS: Parker's love of architecture continued through high school. Unfortunately, the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee didn't have an architecture department. The school counselor convinced him to sign up for engineering instead. But within a year, World War II broke out and Parker enlisted. He was 19.

LEONARD PARKER: Of the people who started-- I don't know how many times we turned over in my platoon. I was with the 45th Infantry Division, 157th Regiment. And there were four people, one of them is still a dear friend of mine, Dan Doherty. There were four people that came out of it OK and two of them had been wounded twice and came back.

The biggest wound I had was I cut my finger. They shut off my canteen and I cut my finger reaching for water and it still wiggles. I have a lot of scars in my mind, but my platoon-- I ended up being a platoon sergeant because guys got killed and you moved up. But my platoon was the first platoon into the concentration camp at Dachau.

MARIANNE COMBS: You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Marianne Combs.

Leonard Parker doesn't talk about what he witnessed when his platoon entered the concentration camp in Dachau, but he does talk about other events during his 14 months of duty that irrevocably changed his life and brought him to Minnesota.

LEONARD PARKER: What happened is a very dear friend of mine, John Larson, who was my foxhole buddy, he got killed. Before we went into combat he said if something happened to him-- his father was a Reverend in North Branch and his mother, Jennie. They had one other-- he had one brother.

And so when John and I were going into combat, he said, "If something happens to me will you go see my mother?" And I said, "Yes." And we exchanged addresses. We hadn't run into any combat that day. And it was wet. It was the rainy season in the Vosges Mountains in Southern France.

And so every time you stop, you dig a hole. I've dug holes across all of Europe. And so we started to dig and hit water right away, about 8 inches deep. So we hadn't had any combat that day, so we arranged with another hole guy named John Minor. How do you like that? It's right in my head.

John Minor was in the next hole with his buddy. So we arranged with John Minor to stand one and sleep three instead of stand two and sleep two. And John and I were sleeping then and John Minor was standing guard.

And I was laying in my back and his stomach in this grungy little hole when they started to shell and the tree burst, hit above us, and showered down. It tore my jacket open and ripped his stomach. And so I got Minor to help and we helped him down to a battalion aid station. And all the way he's saying, oh, my million dollar wound. I'm out of here now. No more misery for John. He died on December 5.

And so after the war, I took a train to Minneapolis and then a bus to North Branch and visit. I spent three days with his mother and father and brother. And coming back to Minneapolis, I looked up some army buddies.

I had already enrolled at the College of Architecture at Illinois. They had a good school there. And I ran into some Army buddies of mine and we went out drinking and so on and so on and they like, you're going Illinois for a little old buddy, you're going to go to have a school of architecture here.

So I went down the next morning and enrolled so we could go carousing with my friends on the military. And that changed my life. So I always say that John Larson absolutely changed my life because I came here to go to school. I joined a fraternity.

One of my fraternity brothers introduced me to Betty, who belonged to a sorority. And I ended up marrying Betty and ended up living in Minneapolis. I could have ended up living in Illinois somewhere. So John Larson really did change my life.

MARIANNE COMBS: Parker went on to get a master's in architecture at MIT, where he met Ralph Rapson. After graduating and working with Eero Saarinen's firm for several years, Parker moved back to Minnesota with his wife Betty and set up his own architecture firm.

Shortly thereafter, Rapson invited him on to the U Of M faculty. Parker taught while continuing to work at his firm. In his spare time, he designed and built his own home.

LEONARD PARKER: I designed this house in 1973. We bought the lot in '64 and I couldn't afford to build anything. I paid $6,400 for an acre and a quarter of land. I bought it. But nobody would buy it because they thought it was impossible to build on it. It's a very steep property.

And I did some studying before we purchased the lot and I said, "No, we can build on this and it'd be exciting to build on a lot like that." And the curtain of leaves and trees all around filter the direct sun and it's just wonderful. No matter what the weather is, it's like living in a forest. And it's really fun. And it was nice that I was able to design my own house.

MARIANNE COMBS: Is that common for architects to design their own homes?

LEONARD PARKER: Most of them are afraid to do it. Look at Ralph. He didn't design his own house. He designed a cabin out in the woods where nobody can see it. [LAUGHS]

MARIANNE COMBS: Why? Is there too much pressure on what people will think of it?

LEONARD PARKER: It is sort of a demonstration of your talent. When you design your own house, there is no inhibitions. You can't blame the client because you're he.

MARIANNE COMBS: It seems to me that sometimes the greatest architecture is architecture that doesn't assert itself on you. It just opens itself up so you feel more present in it but you're not feeling like it's imposing on you in any way.

LEONARD PARKER: No, it's not self-conscious. I think you're not trying to do something excessive in order to make an impression. It's appropriate, which is a very important word in architecture, appropriateness.

It's appropriate to the site and it's appropriate to its use. And when you are able to deal with those two issues, satisfy them with sensitivity of detail and form, that's what architecture is.

MARIANNE COMBS: But in here, because you've done so much to take advantage of the views and the presence of the woods and the light, that really that's what's first and foremost here. It's not the building, it's the surroundings.

LEONARD PARKER: Yeah. It is true about architecture. That concept is based on two things-- primarily sight, how you respond to the sight you build on. And secondly, the program.

And then what you do beyond that in terms of organizing the spaces and getting them to contribute beyond that which is where the aesthetic comes in, which takes it beyond the practical. It becomes something contributed beyond.

And a lot of times people don't even know why they feel comfortable or feel good in a space. But it is because those two elements, combined with the sensitivity of space and form that's what makes it right. It's called feng shui.

[LAUGHTER]

MARIANNE COMBS: Do you believe in feng shui?

LEONARD PARKER: Oh yeah, I do. I think that people respond to the places in which they live and work and recreate.

MARIANNE COMBS: I had one architect tell me that he believed that raising children in truly well-designed homes would lead them to be more creative and intelligent human beings.

LEONARD PARKER: Well, that's true for all four of my kids.

[LAUGHTER]

That's true. They all doing very well. And I think it's absolutely because they lived in this house. Yeah, you can believe it.

MARIANNE COMBS: It has nothing to do with your genes.

[LAUGHTER]

LEONARD PARKER: Not at all. Do you want to go upstairs?

MARIANNE COMBS: Yeah, I'd love to.

LEONARD PARKER: We have--

MARIANNE COMBS: Oh, wow. So this is a spiral staircase. I love it that you've concealed the staircase in this column that's formed the core of the house.

LEONARD PARKER: Yeah. It's nice because it affords some privacy and a private end of the house when you come in. And it ties all three levels together in a very compact way.

MARIANNE COMBS: It feels sort of like a spinal cord for the building.

LEONARD PARKER: That's exactly right. Yeah. And it defines the entry. It does a lot of things. I was very clever doing that.

[LAUGHTER]

MARIANNE COMBS: Parker has designed buildings in places as far-flung as Korea and the Philippines, yet he always managed to balance his architectural work with teaching. He served on the University of Minnesota faculty for 34 years and says it was a great source of inspiration.

LEONARD PARKER: Teaching is exciting. And it's very helpful, too, because it gives you an opportunity to explore ideas without commitment. And also it's incredible how much you learn from innocence from students who really are finding their way, [COUGHS] but have insights that are very helpful to you as a mature architect.

I honestly feel and I think anybody who is honest with themselves, they learn as much from the students as the students learn from you. And this is particularly true in architecture because there is theory involved, but there's so much more than theory because everything you do results in a practical end. And so the moving from the theoretical to the practical they're so intertwined that you really can't separate them.

MARIANNE COMBS: When you first talked about what drew you to architecture, you mentioned how Frank Lloyd Wright was respected and lauded, and wow, to have such a station and to be talked about in such a way would be so cool. Later on, as you learned more and as you learned more about the theory of architecture, what was it really that fascinated you about becoming an architect and about creating new buildings?

LEONARD PARKER: I think that's the word. The ability-- creation is a wonderful thing. And people who are involved in any way in creating something that wasn't there before and doing it in a way that enhanced other people's lives, or at least hopefully, that's something to be cherished and to really work hard to achieve.

Even though a lot of people don't view what they do in that light, I think there's an incentive connected with that. At least for me, it was a dominating aspect of my being. Not that I sacrificed anything unduly in order to achieve it, I didn't.

And the business of finding a place to love and a place to live and a community to be a part of, all those things happen naturally. But I've always felt that if you didn't have that one component which held everything together, whatever that is, but for me it was my work, which is extraordinarily stimulating.

MARIANNE COMBS: You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Marianne Combs.

Minneapolis is currently in the middle of an architectural boom. The Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Library, the Children's Theater Company, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts are all expanding. In each case, the organization has chosen outside architects with an international reputation-- Herzog and de Meuron, Cesar Pelli, and Michael Graves.

Architect Leonard Parker says he understands the allure of big names from exotic places, but he's dismayed that local talent isn't getting more high-profile work. He says outside architects aren't likely to understand environmental needs as well as local architects. Parker has spent close to 50 years in Minneapolis, and he's watched the skyline change dramatically.

LEONARD PARKER: In 1972, Philip Johnson had just completed the IDS Tower. And I get a call from a reporter in The New York Times asking me how do architects feel about the Philip Johnson building.

So I said, "Well, there are two things about it. One, the public space is absolutely incredible. It's a city center kind of thing. And the tower is a beautiful tower, but it makes the rest of Minneapolis look like a toy town because the next largest building is the Foshay Tower, which is 24 stories. So it's double that height, more than double the height."

So she said, "Well, don't you think that over time there'll be other towers built that will begin to match up with the skyline?" And I said, "Not in Minneapolis." [LAUGHS] Just to tell you what a prognosticator I am. I said, "I doubt very much that Minneapolis can support more than one IDS Tower." So you can see how smart I was.

MARIANNE COMBS: So what do you think of the architecture that we've seen grow up over the years in the Twin Cities?

LEONARD PARKER: I think it's like every other major city. It's a mixed bag. I think Minneapolis, in my judgment, is one of the three or four most beautiful cities in the United States. And the thing that speaks well about our leadership and the people who reside here is that they have cherished the ring of lakes and the residential areas that surround them and have expanded that in many ways.

But like every other city, commerce rules the day. When you're talking about downtown, it grows just like every other city grows. As the need arises and the land is available, people build and they build towers most of the time without regard to who their neighbors are.

MARIANNE COMBS: Parker says he's excited by the future possibilities of architecture as technology and materials change, but he also has some concerns.

LEONARD PARKER: One is education of architects, which is where the seed is planted in terms of priorities. And two is in the area where the need is the greatest, which is at the lower income levels, the attention paid to it is the lowest. And that may have something to do with who's in charge of the politics at the moment, but it's something that if you leave it drag long enough, it's going to be a real serious problem.

What's happening right now in New Orleans is going to put a focus on that issue. So in some ways, just think of all the people who lost their place to live. Regardless of whether it was luxurious or minimal, they lost their place to live. And there is going to be a million and more people who need to be provided housing, how is that going to happen?

I don't think there's any system in place right now. After the war, there was a number of programs that they're trying to provide housing for returning veterans, and increase in population that was explosive. And I don't think there's any program in place now. So it makes me wonder how are they going to deal with that kind of problem.

The New Orleans problem puts a lens on a problem, which is really pervading them. And nobody's paying much attention to it because why worry about people who don't have a lot of money and might be living in substandard housing. If there's anything good that can come out of a catastrophe like the flooding in New Orleans and the surrounding area, that may be it. It puts a new focus on the need for sheltering people.

MARIANNE COMBS: Architect Leonard Parker speaking in his Minnetonka home. You've been listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Marianne Combs.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARY EICHTEN: That does it for our Midday program today and for this week. Gary Eichten here. Thanks so much for tuning in. Reminder, all of our Midday programs are available on our website, minnesotapublicradio.org.

Sarah Meyer is the producer of our program. Curtis Gilbert is our assistant producer. And we had help this week from Sasha Aslanian and Susan Lean. Hope you can tune in Monday, 11:00 to 1:00 for Midday.