Cocktails & Conversation: John Ruble & Mark Simon on Charles Moore

Cocktails & Conversations is series of dialogues about design that joins an architect with a critic, journalist, curator, or architectural historian to discuss current architecture design issues. Each program includes a custom-crafted cocktail—one inspired by the architect’s work and created especially for this event.

Charles Moore (1925-1993) was one of the most influential twentieth century American architects. As an educator, he crisscrossed the country, teaching at institutions including Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. He served as the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture from 1965 to 1970, followed by a sojourn at the University of California Los Angeles. He was well-known for starting architectural firms with former students, including Donlyn Lyndon and William Turnbull; this creative collaboration resulted in the design of Sea Ranch in 1967. Other firms followed this model, including Centerbrook Architects, Moore Ruble Yudell, Urban Innovations Group, and Moore/Andersson. This Cocktails and Conversations will feature representatives from two of Moore’s firms, who will discuss how firms transition to the next generation and how Moore’s legacy has been translated and transformed into their own work.

Speakers:
John Ruble, FAIA, Partner, Moore Ruble Yudell Architects and Planners
Mark Simon, FAIA, Principal, Centerbrook Architects and Planners

Moderator:
Paul Makovsky, Vice President of Design, Metropolis

John Ruble began his career as architect and planner in the Peace Corps, Tunisia, where a profound experience of culture, climate, and place provided lasting influences on his work. Moving to California in the mid-seventies, he studied and associated with Charles Moore at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1977, John, Charles, and Buzz Yudell formed Moore Ruble Yudell, a partnership based on shared humanistic values. As Design Partner, John has helped realize some of the firm’s best-known international work, including Moore Ruble Yudell’s competition winning design for the United States Embassy in Berlin and the National AIA Honor Award-winning Dublin Institute of Technology Campus Master Plan in Dublin, Ireland. John holds degrees from the University of Virginia School of Architecture and from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UCLA. Together with Buzz Yudell, he was awarded the Los Angeles AIA Gold Medal in 2007.

Mark Simon received his B.A., cum laude, in 1968 from Brandeis University with honors in sculpture, and his Master of Architecture from Yale University in 1972. In 1974, he went to work with architect Charles Moore, his former dean and teacher at Yale. Over the next five years, they collaborated on a series of houses, several of them “solar houses”, pioneering what is now known as sustainable design. He became a principal in Moore Grover Harper and subsequently co-founded Centerbrook in 1982. His practice today ranges from private residences and furniture to large academic, commercial, and institutional buildings. His most recent built designs include an alumni conference center at Duke University, a residence hall at Sacred Heart University, a synagogue in Ohio, an ocean view residence in Mexico; he is also in the early stages of a complete renovation and expansion of Yale’s Peabody Museum. His work has been noted for innovative design by publications worldwide and has received over 100 awards for design excellence. In 1990, he was advanced to the AIA College of Fellows.

Paul Makovsky is Vice President of Design at the award-winning Metropolis, an award-winning magazine that examines architecture and design at all scales. A graduate of McGill University and the University of Toronto, he has also curated numerous exhibitions on design and architecture, including “Canadian by Nature”, which showcased over 60 emerging designers and studios of Canadian architecture and design. For the forthcoming May issue of Metropolis, he produced the cover story that reexamines the legacy of Post Modern architecture in Los Angeles between the 1970s and the early 1990s, and features the work of Moore, Ruble, Yudell.

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