Pietro Belluschi, FAIA

Year Awarded: 1972
Born: August 18, 1899; Ancona, Italy
Died: 1994; Portland,Oregon

Quote
I still believe that style comes from understanding all the elements of a problem: space, access, view, sun, scale, intimacy, even love. —Interview by Meredith L. Clausen, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/bellus83.htm


Projects
• 1980: San Francisco Symphony Hall, with SOM
• 1969: Juilliard School within the Lincoln Center, New York City
• 1969: Bank of America Center, San Francisco
• 1948: Equitable Savings & Loan Association Building, Portland, Ore.
• 1938: Sutor House, Portland, Ore.
• 1938: Portland Art Museum
• Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, San Francisco
• Pan Am Building, New York City (with Walter Gropius)


Biography
Pietro Belluschi was born in Ancona, Italy, in 1899 and lived there until he was six years old. In the autumn of 1905, his family moved to Rome, which he called home until he was 24, with the exception of 1911 to 1913, when his father was transferred to Bologna by the railroad company for which he worked.

Belluschi left high school at age 17 to fight in WWI with the Italian army. He wanted to become an officer but needed a diploma, which he studied at night to earn. He then attended officer's school in Turin for 45 days. After being commissioned as an officer, he was sent to the front in September 1917; he took part in the retreat of Caporetto, where he was nearly taken prisoner. He served in the army until 1920.

At that time, Belluschi enrolled in the University of Rome. As the university at that time had no architecture school, he earned a degree in civil engineering from the School of Applied Engineering in 1922.

In 1923 Belluschi spent a few months in Rome, working as inspector on a housing project. That year, he received a one-year exchange scholarship to study at Cornell University in New York. He took civil engineering courses and one course in architecture while there and obtained a civil engineering degree in 1924.

After graduating from Cornell, he went to Idaho, arriving in the small town of Kellogg with only two dollars in his pocket. He worked as a helper electrician in a mining company, staying there nine months while he earned about $600. At that point, he asked his boss if he would ask a local architect to write letters of introduction to architects on the west coast. The architect gave him a number of letters, including one to A.E. Doyle in Portland, Ore. He was told Doyle was most likely to have some work, so without writing ahead, he took the train to Portland and arrived there in April.

He joined the architecture firm of A.E. Doyle and worked tracing drawings. Doyle was impressed with his work, rewarding him with frequent raises. In 1925, Belluschi was assigned to the design department and quickly gained skills by observing and learning as much as possible. In 1927, the department head had to leave town very quickly after a personal scandal, so Belluschi became the new head of the design department in his place. He served as chief designer with A.E. Doyle for several years before becoming a partner in 1933.

During the early 1930s, when the Depression was at its worst, A.E. Doyle had little work, so in 1932 Belluschi returned to Italy to stay with his family. In 1934, when the market picked up a little, he returned to Oregon. In the mid-1930s he began to design houses. In 1943, Belluschi began to design under his own name. While working in Portland, Belluschi’s commercial work reflected the developing International style, while his housing and religious buildings reflected regional traditions and used local materials. He was a prominent contributor to the style known as Pacific Northwest Regionalism.

From 1951 to 1965, Belluschi served as dean of the M.I.T. School of Architecture and Planning. In 1958, he helped to establish a PhD degree in planning and in 1959 he cofounded with Harvard University the Joint Center for Urban Studies.

In 1954, Belluschi was made a Fellow of the Academy of Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1965, he became a consulting professor of architecture at the University of Oregon, Eugene, and in 1966 he was made the Thomas Jefferson professor of architecture at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Since 1965, he had an office in Boston.

In 50 years of practice, Belluschi designed more 1,000 buildings. Although his commercial designs owe much to the International Style, his domestic and religious work show a preference for regional traditions and native materials. Belluschi’s strove to combine beauty with usefulness.