(1930- )
One of a generation of influential American architects in the second half of the 20th century who explored the expressive possibilities of bright colours, pattern, and symbolism as key features of the design process, Tigerman also played an important role in architectural education, having held visiting architectural professorial chairs at a number of leading university architectural schools including Yale and Harvard. In common with many of his contemporaries he worked for a number of manufacturers of fashionable domestic products such as Alessi and Swid Powell. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1948 to 1949, and the Institute of Design at Chicago from 1949 to 1950, completing his architectural studies at Master's level at Yale University in 1961. After working as an architectural draughtsman he was a designer for a number of practices including Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (1957-9) before establishing Stanley Tigerman & Associates in 1964. Amongst his well-known buildings are the Illinois Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in Chicago (1982), the Momochi Residential Complex in Fukuoka, Japan (1991) and the Herman Miller Complex in Sacramento, California (1991). Tigerman also worked in several fields of design including ceramics, furniture, and metalware. An important association was with the New York-based Swid Powell company, which began to explore the possibilities of bringing together leading progressive architects to design porcelain, silverware, and glass products for the aesthetically conscious affluent urban home. Tigerman contributed to the first range of Swid Powell products in 1984 and with Margaret McCurry (of Tigerman McCurry Architects) also designed porcelain teasets for the company, including the Teaside seven-piece crockery set (1985), which drew on the vernacular agricultural architecture of the Midwest for its inspiration (in some ways paralleling ideas explored by Robert Venturi in his Italianate Village teaset for Swid Powell of 1984), and the decorative Sunshine and historically informed Pompeii plates of 1985 and 1986. He also explored the decorative potential of ColorCore, a new material in a wide range of colours developed by Formica International Limited in the 1980s. Alongside other celebrated architect designers such as Frank Gehry and Venturi he participated in the celebrated ColorCore Surface and Ornament design competition (1983) and its follow-up, Material Evidence, the latter opening in the Renwick Gallery, Washington, before touring the United States. Exemplifying Tigerman's design outlook was his Tête-à-tête double easy chair (1985) in ColorCore. Decoratively striped in the fashion of deckchairs, this easy chair also explored the expressive potential of sculptural form and the ability of the new material to support a dramatic cantilever. Tigerman's commissions to design for the Italian housewares manufacturer Alessi included his contribution to the company's Tea and Coffee Piazza series of 1983. His five-piece silver tea and coffee set reflected the eclecticism of Postmodernism with trompe-l'œil fingers serving as tray handles. In 1994 Tigerman co-founded Archeworks, a socially oriented design research institute and school of which he was director. Throughout his career he has enjoyed considerable peer recognition, representing the United States at the Venice Biennali of 1976 and 1980, and receiving numerous awards from national institutions and organizations, including five National Honor Awards from the (AIA) American Institute of Architects, a body of which he was a Fellow. His work has also been comprehensively represented in a number of exhibitions including the Art Institute of Chicago show entitled Stanley Tigerman: Recent Works (1990). In addition to the important role that Tigerman has played in American architectural education, he has also curated a number of exhibitions and written several architectural books—historical and contemporary, theoretical and relating to his own practice.
