Joseph Esherick (architect)
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Joseph Esherick (December 28, 1914 – December 17, 1998) was an American architect.
Life and work
Esherick was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1937, Esherick set up practice in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1953 and taught at University of California, Berkeley for many years. He was awarded the AIA Gold Medal in 1989.
Inheriting the Bay Area architectural tradition of figures like Bernard Maybeck and William Wurster, Esherick's designs for hundreds of houses through his career centered on attention to regional traditions, site requirements, and user needs.
In 1959, Esherick was the co-founder, along with William Wurster and Vernon DeMars, of Berkeley's influential College of Environmental Design (CED). The CED encompassed disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, environmental planning and city planning, and served as a nexus for figures like Christopher Alexander, Catherine Bauer, Galen Cranz, Donlyn Lyndon, Roger Montgomery, Charles Moore, and William Wilson Wurster.
In 1972 Esherick reorganized his office, turning away from houses to more commercial and academic work, with three longtime associates George Homsey, Peter Dodge and Chuck Davis to form Esherick Homsey Dodge & Davis, the winner of the 1986 Architecture Firm Award. The firm continues today as EHDD Architecture. In 1976, Esherick was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1990.
In 1989 Esherick received the AIA Gold Medal.
Esherick was the nephew of American sculptor Wharton Esherick.
Work
- House at Kentwoodlands, Kent Woodlands, California, 1957
- Cary House, Mill Valley, California, 1960
- Harold E. Jones Child Study Center, at University of California, Berkeley, 1960
- Bermak House, Oakland, California, 1963, with architect Peter Dodge
- Six Sea Ranch Demonstration Houses (now called The Hedgerow Homes) (in collaboration with Lawrence Halprin and Charles Moore), Sonoma County, California, 1967
- The Cannery, San Francisco, California, 1968
- Mountain House (aka Roscoe House) Alamo, California, 1972
- Garfield School, San Francisco, California, 1981
- Flora Lamson Hewlett Library, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, 1981
- Silver Lake Lodge, Deer Valley, Utah, 1982
- Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, California, 1984
- Hermitage Condominiums, San Francisco, California, 1984
- McGuire house, 268 Seadrift Road, Stinson Beach, California, 1987[1]
- Henry's Fork Lodge, Island Park, Idaho, 1991
- Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach, California, 1998
- Tenderloin Community School, 1999
Notes
- ^ Champion, Allison Brophy (October 3, 2012). "Stinson Beach home is an Esherick masterpiece". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 5 March 2015.
References
- Joseph Esherick. An architectural practice in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1938-1996 : oral history transcript / 1996
- A Bay Region master: The architecture of Joseph Esherick finally gets its due
External links
Media related to Joseph Esherick at Wikimedia Commons- Finding aid to the Joseph Esherick Collection at the Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley
