Richard Meier
Richard Meier is an American architect whose modernist buildings are known for geometric forms, white surfaces, and carefully shaped natural light.
Modern architecture: An architectural movement that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, emphasizing new materials, functional planning, and forms distinct from historical styles. Meier’s buildings extend modern architecture through abstract geometry and restrained surfaces.
Getty Center: A cultural complex in Los Angeles designed by Richard Meier and opened in 1997. Its travertine and white enamel-clad buildings bring Meier’s geometry into a large institutional campus.
Le Corbusier: A Swiss-French architect and urban planner who helped shape modern architecture through buildings, writings, and urban proposals. Meier’s early work drew on Le Corbusier’s white forms, ramps, and sculptural spatial sequences.
Postmodern architecture: An architectural movement that challenged modernism through historical references, ornament, symbolism, and plural styles. Its embrace of historical allusion contrasts with Meier’s continued reliance on abstract modernist forms.
Pritzker Architecture Prize: An international award established in 1979 to recognize achievement in architecture. Meier received the prize in 1984, formalizing his international standing as an architect.
White architecture: An architectural approach that uses white surfaces to emphasize form, light, and spatial relationships. White exteriors became a signature element of Meier’s visual language.
The Getty Center's Central Garden: A landscaped garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, designed by artist Robert Irwin. Its changing paths and water features contrast with, and complement, Meier’s ordered architecture.
Philip Johnson: An American architect, curator, and critic who helped popularize modern architecture in the United States. Johnson included Meier among the architects featured in the 1969 exhibition and book “Five Architects.”
Brutalism: A modern architectural movement associated with massive forms, exposed concrete, and an emphasis on material structure. Brutalism’s weighty concrete expression differs from Meier’s light-filled, predominantly white compositions.
New York Five: A group of five American architects whose modernist work was presented together in a 1969 exhibition and 1972 book. Meier’s association with the group connected his work to a renewed interest in white modernist architecture.