Paul Rudolph

Paul Marvin Rudolph was an American architect and the dean of the Yale School of Architecture for six years, known for use of concrete and highly complex floor plans. His most famous work is the Yale Art and Architecture Building (A&A Building), a spatially complex Brutalist concrete structure.
Rudolph earned his bachelor's degree in architecture at Auburn University (then known as Alabama Polytechnic Institute) in 1940 and then moved on to the Harvard Graduate School of Design to study with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. After three years, he left to serve in the Navy for another three years, returning to Harvard to receive his master's in 1947.
He moved to Sarasota, Florida and partnered with Ralph Twitchell for four years until he started his own practice in 1951. Rudolph's Sarasota time is now part of the period labeled Sarasota Modern in his career.
Notable for its appearance in the 1958 book, Masters of Modern Architecture, the W. R. Healy House, built in 1950, was a one-story Sarasota house built on posts. The roof was concave, in order to allow rainwater to drain off. In addition, Rudolph used jalousie windows, which enabled the characteristic breezes to and from Sarasota Bay to flow into the house. Adaptation to the subtropical climate was central to his designs and Rudolph is considered one of the major architects in what is labeled the Sarasota School of Architecture.
Other Sarasota landmarks by Rudolph include the Sarasota County Riverview High School, built in 1957 as his first large scale project. There was a great deal of controversy in Sarasota, where many members of the community appealed for the retention of the historic building after the decision reached in 2006 by the county school board to demolish the structure.
Rudolph died in 1997 at the age of seventy-eight in New York from peritoneal mesothelioma, a cancer that almost always originates from exposure to asbestos.