Anthony J. Lumsden, 1928 - 2011

Anthony J. Lumsden passed away last month, and the Architect's Newspaper covers his obituary in fine fashion.  By coincidence, he too, died from pancreatic cancer, although he was 83 when he passed away, as opposed to Steve Jobs.

I'm mentioning Mr. Lumsden's passing for two reasons:

• First, I briefly got to experience up close, how he worked, when I had spent a Summer working at DMJM Hawaii.  (There is also some irony here: the previous Summer I worked as an architectural model builder, and worked on the model for one of DMJM / Mr. Lumsden's projects, the Imperial Plaza.)  He had come down from Los Angeles to work on a design for a condo building, one that unfortunately never got built.  What I realized during that time, is that I'm not particularly skilled at speedy production whether sketching or model building -- I'm too methodical and cautious, but most of all, impatient.  Whereas I can entertain ideas from modest, primitive sketches, others are willing to invest time into the craft of building and sketching.  Mr. Lumsden was quite fast at cutting and drawing, though most of that labor was done by his assistant.  His process worked a lot like Frank Gehry's, actually.  He worked like a composer, directing others to create appendages that he would then add and subtract as needed.  I learned a lot about short cuts in sketching and building study models, but in the process of going digital, I gave up most of that knowledge, again because I'm impatient.
• Second, I've always admired his work, particularly the Sepulveda Water Reclamation Facility in Los Angeles.  Both he and Cesar Pelli were former designers in charge at DMJM, and their designs were at the core of why I wanted to work a Summer at DMJM in the first place.