Eye of the Tigerman

The Yale School of Architecture honors this fall the success of one of its own, Stanley Tigerman (‘60 B.Arch, ‘61 M.Arch), in a new exhibit at its gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. Now open for viewing, Ceci n’est pas une rêverie: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman celebrates the upcoming 2012 transfer of the starchitect’s drawing archive to Yale University’s Manuscripts and Archives depository, which holds records from other famous A&D professionals such as Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, and Eero Saarinen. The exhibit also marks the publication of Tigerman’s Schlepping Through Ambivalence: Essays on an American Architectural Condition (Yale University Press, October 2011), a collection of the architect’s writings from 1964 to 2011 edited by Yale School of Architecture Associate Professor Emmanuel Petit, and his autobiography, Designing Bridges to Burn: Architectural Memoirs by Stanley Tigerman (ORO Editions, August 2011).

Ceci n’est pas une rêverie, which translates from French to “This is not a dream,” features a thematic representation of Tigerman’s projects according to the motifs of utopia, allegory, death, humor, division, drift, yaleiana, identity, and (dis)order. Models and sketches on display include some of Tigerman’s early and mid-career projects, such as the Five Polytechnic Institutes in Bangladesh (1966–75); the Urban Matrix proposal on Lake Michigan (1967–68); and Dante’s Bathroom Addition, an unbuilt, allegorical project for Kohler (1980). Recent work includes the Commonwealth Edison Energy Museum in Zion, Illinois (1987–90) and the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, in Skokie (2000–2009).

Tableware designs, “architoon” drawings, photographs, and other artwork and sketches will also be showcased, as well as Yale archival data of Tigerman’s Bachelor’s and Master’s theses. A video interview with the starchitect, produced by Karen Carter Lynch, gives attendees a present-day perspective.

Petit, who is also curator for the exhibition, will share his insights during a free public lecture on September 1 in the Paul Rudolph Hall auditorium at 6:30 p.m.

Ceci n’est pas une rêverie: The Architecture of Stanley will be on display at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery, located on the second floor of the college’s Paul Rudolph Hall at 180 York Street, through November 5. Hours are Mondays to Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibit will travel in January 2012 to Chicago’s Graham Foundation’s Madlener House and then the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. For additional information, visit www.architecture.yale.edu.

Tigerman is a Chicago native and cofounder of his firm, Tigerman McCurry Architects. He holds an expansive portfolio of projects throughout North America, Western Europe, and Asia—as well as a furniture, household, and jewelry designs—that has received numerous honors, including seven AIA Honor Awards and more than 120 national and local design awards. Tigerman and Eva Maddox co-founded the ARCHEWORKS design “laboratory” and school in Chicago. He also has served as a visiting professor and advisory-committee member at several schools of architecture including Yale and Harvard and was the director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

—Stacy Straczynski