Can You Match These Faces With Their Famous Designs?

Understandably, architects are more well-known for their building facades than for their own faces. Celebrity architects today are exceptions to this rule, given the ubiquity of images online and the way "starchitects" are being used to brand buildings and generate revenue for their clients. But if we look back in history, only the most die-hard fans of architecture will recognize architects, even those whose names are well-known. To put the emphasis on the architects themselves, this Ideabook presents some architect portraits and examines how they relate to the houses they designed.

We start with husband and wife Charles and Ray Eames, who are influencing designers to this day. Together they designed and made furniture, films, toys and their own house and studio, among many other things. Not surprisingly, practicing in the middle of the 20th century, Charles often overshadowed Ray (not just physically with his height). But as pointed out in an Ideabook on the film Eames: The Architect and the Painter, "the producers made sure to give Ray her fair share of credit in the film." This photo of them picks up on the collaborative nature of their work.


Together the Eameses designed only one piece of architecture, their own house and studio in Pacific Palisades, California. Like their furniture and other design work, the architecture expresses a concern at all levels, as well as a means of turning the standard (in this case a prefab kit of parts) into the artistic.


What comes across in some of the portraits of the couple is not only how they collaborate, but also how they enabled each other's creativity. This view of them seemingly pinned down by the legs of their famous chairs also picks up on their sense of humor, even as their joined hands signal their love for each other.


One of the most lasting visages of modern architecture is Le Corbusier (center in the photo), born in 1887 as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret. Much of his face recognition comes from the signature black-framed glasses that he wore throughout his life, inspiring many that followed him to do the same.


The most well-known house designed by Le Corbusier is the Villa Savoye (1931) near Paris. If the eyes are the view in the soul, and therefore windows are a view in the psyche of a house (ever notice how houses with punched windows look face-like?), then Corbusier confused matters with his horizontal ribbon windows.


Frank Lloyd Wright also had a very distinctive look, but not one replicated since, given how it harkened back to the 19th century more than anything modern. Architect and Houzz contributor Jody Brown summed it up pretty well with this question for Mr. Wright.


Wright's anachronistic appearance gives a strong hint at how his modern architecture (it may look quaint now, but it certainly broke with the past through form and relatively open interiors) exuded a warmth that architects such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius did not accomplish through their "International Style" modernism.

See more of Wright's biggest Prairie-style house


Walter Gropius is a common name, often lumped with Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, but his face is hardly as familiar as theirs. He is known more for starting the Bauhaus in Germany and transforming the architecture program at Harvard after immigrating to the United States.

This pose — fingers on temple — seems geared to express this academic stance.

And, like Corbusier's frames, bow ties would become another stereotype of architects, primarily academic ones.


After Gropius's move to the United States he built his own house, his most famous work outside the Bauhaus in Germany.


An architect who took Le Corbusier's glasses to heart was Philip Johnson, pictured here in his 50s and in his 90s. Johnson moved from one style to another (modern to postmodern to deconstructivism) very fluidly, and his style paralleled that.


Johnson's own glass house was designed about 15 years before the left previous photo. The architect would add about 10 structures to the property in New Canaan, Connecticut, running the gamut from historical postmodernism to Darth Vader-like deconstructivism. His estate (well worth a visit) is certainly an embodiment of the individual.

Learn more about this house


Alvar Aalto, the great Finnish architect, is another name often uttered alongside Wright, Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Mies. Often seen as a proponent of the humanist side of modernism (rather than as a style), the relative informality of his designs comes across in his laid-back appearance.


Aalto's designs (such as the world-famous Villa Mairea) were born from an appreciation of the Finnish landscape, and even though they are modern they appear to belong to the landscape.


Paul Rudolph was a late-modern architect (coming a generation or so after Le Corbusier and the rest) known for "brutalist" architecture, such as the Art and Architecture Building (pictured) at Yale University that now bears his name. Rudolph's military-looking haircut can be attributed to the three years he spent in the Navy in the middle of his graduate education at Harvard.


The Umbrella House is one of his most famous residential commissions; it was lovingly restored by Ciulla Design after all but losing the eponymous sunshade. Many of Rudolph's designs, residential and otherwise, have come under threat of demolition in recent years.

Much of this stems from the fact that midcentury modern buildings are now old, and without maintenance they require extensive preservation. Given a general dislike of Brutalist architecture, too many of these threats have resulted in destruction.

See more of this restoration project


One of the most recognizable faces of architecture today is Frank Gehry. This is not surprising, given his celebrity status since realizing the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. And how many architects can say they appeared on The Simpsons?


Perhaps stemming from his Canadian roots, Gehry is pretty modest when it comes to his appearance. His architecture might appear flashy and (like his own house here) out of place, but this stems from doing his own thing rather than making a stylish statement. Nevertheless, since Bilbao, cities and institutions have tapped the architect to create signature Gehry buildings.


We started with a married couple, and we end with one, as well. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (both in their 80s) have been in the news a lot lately, particularly the latter for calling out the Pritzer Architecture Prize for not acknowledging her contributions in Venturi's 1991 award. Support from other architects is pressuring the Pritzker for a retroactive prize, so far unsuccessfully.


One of the duo's most famous projects is the Vanna Venturi House (1964) for Robert Venturi's mother. It is seen as an early example of postmodern architecture, but also as designed solely by Venturi. Yet with the recent attention to the decades that Denise Scott Brown was overshadowed by her husband and partner, her influence on the design is being properly attributed.

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