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Kendrick Banks Kellogg, a genre-bending architect who helped pioneer the natural modernism motion, died on February 16 in San Diego at 89. He’s survived by his spouse, Franeva Kellogg, three kids from his former marriage and their mom, and 5 grandchildren.
Kellogg leaves behind a legacy of daring, biophilic residences, together with the Onion Home in Kona, Hawaii, the Surfer Home and Lotus Home in La Jolla, California, and—maybe most notably—the strikingly otherworldly Kellogg Doolittle Residence in Joshua Tree, California.
His most distinctive works defy neat categorization. They’re deeply aware of web site and ebullient, with layered, curvilinear varieties that burst with life. Sinuous shapes, a respect for the panorama, and the applying of pure supplies are hallmarks of Kellogg’s oeuvre. Though glossy, computer-generated renderings generally mirror Kellogg’s work, the trailblazing architect eschewed excessive tech instruments, refusing to design something with a pc to depart room for improvisation.
He’s remembered as each a visionary architect and a proficient craftsman who may usually be discovered on web site, clad in cargo shorts and a jacket. He regularly labored as an engineer, draftsman, contractor, and carpenter. Whereas in his 70s, Kellogg maintained that he may survey a web site in three hours with a tape measure and $20 value of kit.
Born in 1939, Kellogg was a lifelong resident of San Diego County. He grew up in Mission Seaside, California: “I had free rein from the time I used to be six or seven years outdated. I might put my bathing swimsuit on and by no means see my dad and mom once more till that night time,” Kellogg informed the LA Occasions.
In his faculty days—he attended a number of universities, and didn’t earn a level—Kellogg and a few fellow college students traveled to the Taliesin West studio in Arizona to attend a public lecture performed by Frank Lloyd Wright. He spoke with the legendary architect, and the assembly impressed him to pivot his research from math and engineering to structure. In the end his imaginative and prescient didn’t match with formal architectural training.
“My philosophy is just like Mr. Wright’s,” Kellogg informed the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Not in elevation, however as nature because the supply … you improve a web site, not create it. The extra uncommon the location, the extra I let it decide the design,” he stated.
In 1959, at age 23 and with out an architectural license, he accomplished his first mission for household mates, the Babcock Home in Mission Seaside. Wright had drawn up plans for a separate, unbuilt residence for a similar house owners that was envisioned as a copper A-Body with triangular varieties. Kellogg’s ensuing design is a spectacular tackle Wright’s authentic idea. Just lately bought in 2023, it put Kellogg on the map. The house is clearly paying homage to Wright’s work, however bears a readability of imaginative and prescient that may outline Kellogg’s portfolio.
Kellogg is usually in contrast with John Lautner, one other protégé of Wright who gained worldwide fame for his contributions to the natural modernism motion. Whereas Kellogg might have achieved much less widespread fame, design devotees assert that he’s an undisputed visionary and champion of the motion in his personal proper.
Kellogg went on to design and engineer over a dozen residences starting within the Nineteen Sixties as a twenty-something and labored into his 80s. Past residential initiatives, his portfolio additionally consists of a number of Chart Home eating places and an expansive stone and glass construction in Karuizawa, Japan, that has been one of many nation’s hottest wedding ceremony chapels for nearly 30 years.
Maybe the apex of his work, the Kellogg Doolittle Home is an bold, otherworldly residence fastidiously sited amid in situ boulders on the fringe of Joshua Tree Nationwide Park. Described by the New York Occasions as “essentially the most unsung nice residence in America by certainly one of structure’s least-known main skills,” the 5,000-square-foot residence was commissioned in 1984 and took 20 years to finish. Kellogg collaborated with craftsman John Vugrin on the mission, who designed and fabricated the interiors. Somewhat than formal partitions, the house consists of 26 curving cantilevered concrete pillars that fan out into the lunar-esque desert panorama. The rib-like varieties are related by sandblasted glass panels.
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