As Modern as
Tomorrow was the 1948 headline of a
Providence Journal article on Ira Rakatansky’s first built house: “a
daring house of modern design...that makes no concessions to
old-fashion ideas,” with “such startling features as a water-cooled
roof, heated stone floors and great areas of glass that allow indoors
and outdoors to merge.”
Born in Providence in
1919, Rakatansky completed undergraduate studies at the Rhode Island
School of Design before continuing his education with Walter
Gropius and Marcel Breuer at
Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. In 1946, Rakatansky returned to
Rhode Island to start an office that continues to practice into the
21st century. Rakatansky’s wide range of residential, religious and
commercial buildings resulted from an innovative and systematic
engagement with client, program, budget, materials, and detailing.
Amidst
the colonial style of New England these buildings caused a stir, as
suggested by another headline, ‘Neighbors Look Twice’—neighbors still
look twice at Modern houses—tomorrow has not yet come. Rakatansky’s
work, however, remains fresh, offering promise that tomorrow may yet
arrive.
Rhode
Island School of Design Architecture Series
John Caserta is a
designer, an adjunct faculty member in the graphic design department at
The Rhode Island School of Design, and the founder of The Design
Office, an organization that supports independent designers in
Providence. A 2004 Fulbright Fellow in the Arts to Italy, he received
an MFA in graphic design from the Yale School of Art and a BA in
journalism from the University of North Carolina.
Lynette
Widder’s career has included works as a practicing architect in
the
U.S., Germany and in German-speaking Switzerland; she is currently
partner in the New York-based firm aardvarchitecture. She has lectured
on topics in contemporary architecture and architectural history at the
Bauhaus Academe Weimar, The Cranberry Academy, the Technical University
of Berlin, University of British Columbia and the Rhode Island School
of Design.
