Biography
(b. Ancona, Italy 1899; d. 1994)
Pietro Belluschi
was born in Ancona, Italy in 1899. He trained as an engineer
at both the University of Rome and at Cornell University, emigrating
to the U. S. in 1923. After working as a mining engineer, he
joined the Portland based architecture firm of A. E. Doyle years
before becoming a partner in 1933. He assumed control of the
firm under his own name in 1943.
During his
years in Portland, Belluschi designed several commercial buildings
in the evolving International Style. Although his commercial
designs owed much to the International Style, his domestic and
religious work showed a preference for regional traditions and
native materials. While contemporary firms rejected tradition,
Doyle's office maintained a strong Beaux Arts tradition.
From 1951
to 1965, Belluschi acted as Dean of Architecture and Planning
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his fifty years
of practice, both in Portland and in Massachusetts, Belluschi
designed over 1000 buildings.
Dennis Sharp.
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture.
New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991. ISBN 0-8230-2539-X. NA40.I45.
p21.
Randall J.
Van Vynckt. International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture.
London: St. James Press, 1993. ISBN 1-55862-087-7. NA40.I48 1993.
Obituary/Pietro
Belluschi
Dean Pietro
Belluschi, 94
Pietro Belluschi,
one of the world's leading architects who served as dean of MIT's
School of Architecture and Planning for 14 years, died February
14 at his home in Portland, OR, at the age of 94. His buildings
include MIT's MacGregor House dormitory at 450 Memorial Drive,
opened in 1970.
The New York
Times described him as a modernist architect whose work ranged
from elegantly simple structures at the start of his career to
such massive urban skyscrapers as the Pan Am Building in New
York City and the Bank of America in San Francisco. He participated
in the design of more than 1,000 buildings in all, among them
the Juilliard School of Music and Alice Tully Hall in New York,
which were done in association with a colleague from MIT, Eduardo
F. Catalano, now professor emeritus of architecture.
Dean Belluschi,
who came to the United States from Italy as an exchange student
in 1923, was trained as an engineer at the University of Rome
and studied at Cornell University.
He was dean
of the MIT school, the nation's oldest, from 1951 to 1965. He
was widely known as an educator during this period, writing and
lecturing frequently. But he continued his architectural practice,
doing most of the work at a drafting board at his Back Bay home.
At his retirement,
MIT President Julius A. Stratton praised Dean Belluschi as "an
inspiration to faculty members and students alike," adding
that "his taste and judgment" had helped shape the
Institute's own building plans and would be permanently reflected
in the development of the campus during that period.
He continued:
"During a period when contemporary architecture was dominated
by a spirit of impersonal functionalism, he sought to combine
elegance and beauty with usefulness. Here at MIT his creative
spirit has been a dominant factor in the development of the School
of Architecture and Planning... He has brought to the Institute
a number of outstanding new members to the faculty. He has supported
with vigor and imagination the extension and strengthening of
the graduate program in the Department of City and Regional Planning
[now Urban Studies and Planning]. Outstanding among the developments
in planning during his tenure as dean were the establishment
in 1958 of the PhD degree in
planning, and the founding, with Harvard, in 1959 of the Joint
Center for Urban Studies."
Dean Belluschi's
first wife, the former Helen Hemmila, died in 1962. He is survived
by his second wife, Marjorie, two sons, four grandchildren and
one great-grandchild.
