Lawrence Kocher: American Architect

The book offers a new conceptual and historical framework for the study of Kocher’s body of work that relocates it within the history of American modern architecture.

Kocher’s work as an independent designer has gotten very little critical attention. The book devotes several chapters to this little-known part of Kocher’s practice and resituates him as one of the main protagonists in the history of American Modern architecture and reveals the profound relationship between Kocher’s designs and existing American domestic traditions. Kocher’ concept of the vernacular included not only the different residential types of Colonial and Early Republican America, but most importantly, other kinds of transitional dwelling artifacts. This book tries to provide evidence about Kocher’s intention of using these vernacular artifacts, alongside the concepts of prefabrication and industrialization inherent to them as a base to construct a new national architecture in which to graft the European modernist tradition.

Kocher’s ideological position and his continuous eagerness for experimentation transformed him into an atypical practitioner. While many of his contemporaries were purely design focused, he established a very avant-garde symbiosis among his three main endeavors: his work as an educator, as a scholar, and as a practitioner. Some of his architectural works can be seen as manifestos that would later further develop in the articles of Architectural Record. Some others are the direct and material demonstrations of industrial systems and materials previously explored in his articles. Even other works are conceived and executed as part of a pedagogical activity. It is rare to find an architectural design in Kocher’s body of work that does not demonstrate a multitude of interconnections among his pedagogy, his editorial work, and his scholarship.