George Ranalli, FAIA | |
---|---|
Born |
George Joseph Ranalli 1946 New York |
Nationality | United States |
Alma mater |
Pratt Institute Harvard University |
Occupation | Architect |
Awards | Sydney L. Strauss Award, Stanford White Award |
Website |
georgeranalli georgeranallidesigns |
Practice | architect, curator, scholar, higher education administrator |
George Joseph Ranalli (born 1946) is an American modernist architect, academic, scholar, curator, and a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He is based in New York City.
A native of The Bronx, New York of Italian American descent, Ranalli attended Mount St. Michael Academy high school. He was inspired to become an architect at the age of about 13 when he saw the then-unfinished Guggenheim Museum which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. He graduated from Mount Saint Michael Academy in The Bronx in 1964. From 1967 to 1968, he attended New York Institute of Technology, and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, where he received a Bachelor of Architecture in 1972. Thereafter, Ranalli attended Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts, earning a Master of Architecture in 1974. Upon graduation, Ranalli traveled on a research grant throughout Europe before returning to New York.
Ranalli founded his firm, George Ranalli, Architect in New York in 1977. In his early career, architecture critic Paul Goldberger described Ranalli in a New York Times article as among the "better younger architects" working in the Modernist idiom. Goldberger commented that Ranalli's designs were tied "as closely to the ancient craft of building as to the modern business of churning out huge commercial projects, yet they bespeak a consistent awareness of the realities of our age as well." In 1991, Michael Sorkin, another modern American architect, later described Ranalli as "a creator and preserver of worlds, a precisionist." Ranalli is credited with carrying forward the lessons of Italian architect Carlo Scarpa into new settings. Architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote Ranalli's "purpose is to move modernism into an enriched and more deeply referenced style."Architectural Record (2015) noted Ranalli's career has been a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk. In 1996, Yale University granted Ranalli a Master of Arts degree, honoris causa.