Eduardo Fernando Catalano (December 19, 1917 – January 28, 2010) was an

Argentine Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or (feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, s ...

architect.

Life and career

Born in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

, Catalano went to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

on a scholarship to the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

and

Harvard Graduate School of Design The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers master's and doctoral programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban ...

. In 1945, after earning his second master's degree in architecture returned to Buenos Aires where he taught at the University of Buenos Aires and ran a private practice. Catalano then taught at the

Architectural Association The Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, commonly referred to as the AA, is the oldest independent school of architecture in the UK and one of the most prestigious and competitive in the world. Its wide-ranging programme ...

in London from 1950 to 1951, when he came back to the United States as a Professor of Architecture at the School of Design in Raleigh,

North Carolina State University North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The universit ...

. In 1956 he began teaching in the graduate program for

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, until 1977, when he moved on "to discover and participate in other endeavors as rewarding as teaching".Catalano, E: "Eduardo Catalano", pages 7–10. Officina Edizioni, 1978 Catalano had an "understanding of the indivisible relationship between space and structure", which earned him praise from

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...

, who wrote to ''House and Home'' magazine when he saw the publishing of the "Raleigh House" AKA the

Catalano House The Eduardo Catalano House was built in 1954 in Raleigh, North Carolina by Eduardo Catalano, a young Argentinian architect. The Catalano house design was highly publicized as the "House of the Decade" by House and Home Magazine in the 1950s and w ...

to say "It is refreshing to see that the shelter, which is the most important element in domestic

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

, has been so imaginatively and skillfully treated as in the house by Eduardo Catalano". Catalano sold the house when he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to teach at MIT. Years of neglect at the end of the 20th century culminated in the house's demolition in 2001.Jetset – Designs for Modern Living: Catalano House – Destroyed Forever
Other buildings designed by Catalano include the US embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina and in

Pretoria Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

, the Juilliard School of Music at New York City's

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...

, Guilford County Courthouse in

Greensboro Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte, North Car ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

, and the Stratton Student Center at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

. (Catalano designed the Guilford County-Greensboro Government Center, not to be confused with the Guilford County Courthouse, designed by Harry Barton from 1918 to 1920.) The

, built in 1954 and which Catalano is best known for, was designed using
hyperbolic paraboloid roof.
Here is a picture of the origina
House.
The roof of the house, a curved structure that is built from straight elements (tongue and groove boarding) evolved from his studies on geometric and structural properties of hyperbolic paraboloids. These studies, which included testing of new materials like aluminum and thin-shell concrete, were published by the University of North Carolina in ''Structures of Warped Surface.'' Eduardo Catalano also created the environmental kinetic sculpture ''

Floralis Genérica ''Floralis Genérica'' is a sculpture made of steel and aluminum located in Plaza de las Naciones Unidas, Avenida Figueroa Alcorta, Buenos Aires, a gift to the city by the Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano. Catalano once said that the flower " ...

'' in

Palermo Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...

Architectural Works

Publications

*Gubitosi, Camillo, and Izzo, Alberto, ''Eduardo Catalano - buildings and projects, Catalogue of the Exhihibition held in Naples'', 1978. *Catalano, Eduardo. ''Structure and Geometry'', Cambridge Architectural Press, 1986. *Catalano, Eduardo. ''the constant - dialogues on architecture in black and white'', Cambridge Architectural Press, 2000.

References

External links

The Flower of Buenos Aires – Eduardo CatalanoGuide to the Eduardo Catalano Papers 1940-2017Guide to the Eduardo Catalano Slides 1954-2002
* (Spanish)

Volume 2 of Arquitectos Americanos Contemporáneos
{{DEFAULTSORT:Catalano, Eduardo 1917 births 2010 deaths University of Pennsylvania alumni Harvard Graduate School of Design alumni Architects from Buenos Aires Place of birth missing MIT School of Architecture and Planning faculty