Cooper Hewitt says...
Currently based in San Francisco, architect Stanley Saitowitz, born in Johannesburg, South Africa, received his Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Witwatersrand in 1974 before moving to California to pursue his Masters in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley in 1977. Saitowitz’s design demonstrates his interest in space, particularly the exploration of interactions between architecture, movement, flux, and time. His work is firmly rooted in the Bay Area tradition of livable modernism, reinterpreting and incorporating past and current cultural references in a contemporary way. Site plays an especially important role in his work, and his designs seek to amplify the specific nature of each of location. In describing Saitowitz’s particular attention to the built and natural environments in his designs, architect Michael Bell notes that “the geometry of Saitowitz’s buildings were, and often still are, engraved in the topography of the earth.”
Saitowitz’s first house was built in 1975, and he has completed numerous residential, commercial, and institutional projects throughout his career. A recipient of many awards, his 1978 design for the Transvaal House was declared a National Monument by the Monuments Council in South Africa in 1997, his New England Holocaust Memorial received the Henry Bacon Medal in 1998, and in 2006 he was a finalist for the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award.
Saitowitz is an Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also taught at numerous schools, including Harvard Graduate School of Design, University of Norman, Oklahoma, University of California, Los Angeles, Rice University, Southern California Institute of the Arts, Cornell University, Syracuse University, and University of Texas at Austin.
