As Chief Architect of the U.S. Government, Edward A. has revolutionized the public image of countless federal agencies by hiring renowned architects to design hundreds of courts, government laboratories, border stations, and office buildings. Finer died on July 1st at the next nursing facility. Falls Church, Virginia. He was 75 years old.
His wife, Francis Finer, said the cause was a brain tumor.
Although Finner was trained as an architect, he did little actual design work in his nearly 35-year public career. He spent most of his time at the General Services Department, essentially a federal landlord.
It was Finner’s job to oversee the construction of new buildings and the renovation of old buildings, starting with finding an architectural firm. He organized an external panel to organize his proposals, create a list of candidates, and then personally picked the winner.
It may not sound attractive, but with a portfolio of about 8,700 buildings and the construction of dozens of buildings each year, this work has immeasurably influenced Mr. Finer’s image of the country’s citizens. In 2003, Esquire magazine called him “the most powerful architect in America today.”
Historically, the process of choosing an architect was as bureaucratic as expected and could create bland mediocrity. The winners were mostly large corporations, many of whom had teams specializing in navigating government paperwork.
This was often the equivalent of the Catch-22, which discouraged young and innovative companies from applying. Only those who have worked in the federal government were invited to work in the federal government.
It changed under Mr. Finner. Since the early 1990s, he has brought great design to both high-profile and ambiguous projects. For example, he hired. Thom mayne His company, Morphosis, designed a high-rise office building in downtown San Francisco and a satellite operations facility for the US Marine and Atmospheric Administration in Suitland, Maryland.
His list of collaborators turned out to be who and who in contemporary American architecture.With Richard Meier, known for the Getty Center in Los Angeles Arquitectonica, A Miami company known for its flashy hotels, both designed courts (Myers is Alphonse M. Damart US Courthouse on Long Island, Central Islip, New York). So did IM Pay, Robert AM Stern, and Kohn Pedersen Fox.
Finer wasn’t the first to claim that good design would benefit the government. Some of the guidelines he sent to companies of interest “Guidance Principles of Federal Architecture” Written in 1962 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a young staff member of the Kennedy administration.
However, those guidelines were ambitious, and for decades the government continued to mass-produce monolithic monoliths. It took someone with Mr. Finer’s infectious enthusiasm to put them into action.
He balanced determination, charisma and disarmament quirks. He was biased towards snake leather cowboy boots and snap button shirts.
He took the bad citizen design almost as a personal insult. He kept his photographs of what he considered to be the “fear” of architecture fixed to the walls of his office. One day in 1998, standing in Lower Manhattan across from the rugged Jacob Javits Federal Building, he asked a Washington Post reporter: Why make a shrock in a landmark? “
Finer was dissatisfied with the lack of new projects during the Reagan era of cost-cutting enthusiasts. But the opportunity finally came in the early 1990s when the government launched a 13-year, $ 10 billion campaign to build or refurbish hundreds of federal courts.
Douglas Woodrock and future Supreme Court judge Stephen Breyer see what they can do for fear that the new project is destined for cramped obsolescence. I contacted Mr. Finer for this.
The three men set up a panel of five to select architects for a new Boston court and brought in private architects and scholars as advisors. They finally chose Henry Cobb from Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, the company that previously designed the nearby John Hancock Tower.
This process has become a model for a system called Design Excellence, which is a representative achievement of Mr. Finner. Instead of asking companies for a pile of paperwork that has little to do with design ideas, what he did in the past and what ideas they could bring to the project at hand. I was asked to submit a portfolio showing this.
He appointed a private architect as a selection judge and established a specialized program to develop criteria for design issues such as accessibility, sustainability and security.
Design Excellence has opened its doors not only to well-established architects like Mr. Cobb, but also to up-and-coming architects.
At the Oklahoma City Federal Building, which replaced the building destroyed by terrorists in 1995, Finner chose Carol Ross Barney. The design of Chicago’s public schools was impressed with the balance between security, accessibility and openness.
“He looked at the quality of our work, not the number of large office buildings we went to,” Bernie said in a telephone interview.
Feiner’s focus on design over budget is often at odds with parliament, especially financial hawks like Senator John McCain of the Arizona Republican Party. Mocked Mr. Cobb’s courthouse As “Taj Mahal”.
Mr. Finer objected. He reiterated that bad design only undermines public respect for the government and what it can achieve. Good design, on the other hand, was essential to creating a vibrant civil culture.
“If we don’t want to portray government agencies as dignified and stable, what services can we expect from them,” he told The Washington Post.
As Moynihan did in the “Guidance Principles,” Finner argued that there should be no official federal style, and his mission changed from Meinu’s bold metal shape to Stern’s rigorous classicism. It extended to.
In December 2020, President Donald Trump signed a presidential order mandating classical construction on all new federal buildings. President Biden revoked his order two months later.
Edward Alan Finner was born on October 16, 1946 in Manhattan and grew up in Bronx. His father, Solomon, owned a company that makes metal trash cans. His mother, Martha (Lipsky) Finer, was a housewife.
Edward was fascinated by architecture and design early in his life and studied both at Brooklyn Technical High School, one of the few high schools in the United States. He graduated from Cooper Union in Manhattan with a degree in architecture in 1969 and a master’s degree in architecture and urban design from the Catholic University of Washington in 1971.
After that, Mr. Finner was able to work in the Navy and quickly lead large-scale projects such as hospitals, shipyards, and submarine bases. He worked briefly at shopping mall pioneer Victor Gruen, and he stayed in the Navy until he joined the Government Services Department in 1981.
After resigning as Chief Architect in 2005, he worked as an executive at the construction companies Skidmore, Orwings & Merrill, Perkins & Will, and the casino and resort company Las Vegas Sands.
With his wife, he survived by his son, Reims. His daughter, Melissa Finer Rockholt. And three grandchildren.
