Eduardo Fernando Catalano, 1917 - 2010, Argentine modernist architect, student of Gropius and Breuer

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Eduardo Fernando Catalano, 1917 - 2010

Eduardo Fernando Catalano was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and came to the United States on scholarships to the Universities of Pennsylvania and Harvard. In 1945, he entered a General Motors design competition using a hyperbolic paraboloid, and won second place out of 914 entries.

He was a graduate student of Walter Gropius and an undergraduate student of Marcel Breuer, both professors at Harvard and considered the pioneering masters of modernist architecture.

Catalano taught at the Architectural Association in London until 1951 when he was recruited as a Professor of Architecture by Henry Kamphoefner for the NCSU School of Design. In 1956, he moved to Boston and taught at MIT until 1977. Buildings designed by Catalano include the US embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Pretoria, South Africa, the Juilliard School of Music at New York City's Lincoln Center, Guilford County Courthouse in Greensboro, and the Stratton Student Center at MIT in Cambridge MA.

-text excerpted from US Modernist

"Professor Emeritus of Architecture Eduardo Catalano dies at age 92," MIT News, February 2, 2010.

"Eduardo Fernando Catalano, architect and MIT professor," Boston Globe, February 10, 2010.

"Inventive Argentinian architect and teacher whose work was eye-openingly modern," The Guardian, February 15, 2010.