Allan Temko, 81 Architecture Critic, Dies Published: January 27, 2006
Allan Temko, a former architecture critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, who won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1990 and wrote a definitive profile of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, died on Wednesday in Orinda, Calif. He was 81. He died after a brief illness, his family said. Mr. Temko was the architecture critic for The Chronicle from 1961 to 1993. His book "Notre Dame of Paris" (Viking, 1955) was most recently issued in paperback by Textbook Publishers in 2003. cont'd.... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/arts/design/27temko.html?_r=1 ============================================================ Allan Temko - architecture watchdog .... "He laughed at himself even while he played the character," said Wilson, who now is executive editor of the Marin Independent Journal. "It was partly making fun of himself ... he recognized who he was and couldn't hide it." But his writing aimed squarely at the casual reader, using vivid phrases that stuck to their targets for good. It was Mr. Temko who first described San Francisco's 39-story Marriott Hotel as "the jukebox," and the Vaillancourt Fountain on the Embarcadero as resembling something "deposited by a concrete dog with square intestines." As for Pier 39, Mr. Temko's 1978 review of the waterfront retail complex was so harsh it provoked an unsuccessful lawsuit from the architect. Consider the opening: "Corn. Kitsch. Schlock. Honky-tonk. Dreck. Schmaltz. Merde." Younger architecture critics, including Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune, hold up Mr. Temko as a model. .... cont'd.... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/26/TEMKO.TMP _______________________________________________ in-enaction mailing list http://mail.architexturez.net/mailman/listinfo/in-enaction + Architexturez collaborative at http://portal.architexturez.org/
