Editorial: Architect passes on, but not his influence

Rapson's design talent was a community and world resource.

Last update: March 31, 2008 - 11:28 PM

It's too simple, as well as too sad, to linger long over the coincidence of Ralph Rapson's death and Jean Nouvel's Pritzker Prize. Rapson, the architect who designed the original Guthrie Theater, passed away Saturday; on Sunday, architecture's most prestigious award went to the man who designed the Guthrie's replacement. A once-elegant theater now reduced to a grassy hillside vs. a muscular, shiny new theater complex basking in the world's admiration: Could any playwright get away with a juxtaposition so blunt?

If so, the script would have to omit some details that are necessary to understanding Rapson's contributions to this community and to the world of design. One such detail, mentioned by his son Rip in a Minnesota Public Radio interview on Monday, is the homage Nouvel paid to Rapson in his design of the new Guthrie. Rip recalled the gratification his father had felt in seeing how closely the design of the new thrust stage hewed to his own concept for the original.

While Nouvel's Guthrie wins deserved praise, it will be a while before it inspires the kind of affection shown the original. Protests against the old Guthrie's demolition were loud and long. How many architects have seen the preservation of their work promoted on bumper stickers?

And Rapson's work comprised much more than the Guthrie. Decades before Nouvel, Rapson designed Rarig Center, a multi-theater complex at the University of Minnesota. He designed at least two U.S. embassies abroad and the awesome, if not universally loved, Riverside Plaza high-rise housing complex once known as Cedar Square West. He headed the university's architecture school for 30 years. He built churches and homes, furniture and flatware.

He preached the gospel of context -- of making a work fit the needs of the client as well as the demands of location. That's one more way in which the Nouvel Guthrie, which draws inspiration from the mill buildings around it, reflects Rapson's influence rather than repudiates it.

Generations of architects have benefited from that influence. Rapson expressed regret at seeing his best-known building meet its end, but he also recognized that the ideas built into it would survive. We hope he recognized the same truth about himself.

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