Arthur Dyson
Arthur Dyson is an American architect.
Early life and apprenticeships
Arthur Dyson was born in Inglewood, California, on February 24, 1940, the son of Harry and Thyra Dyson. While still in high school, he had a paid position in the architectural firm of Bartoli and Skinner from 1957 to 1958. On June 21, 1958, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner published a photograph of Dyson reporting his acceptance as an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright in the Taliesin Fellowship. Although Dyson would have less than a year in the Taliesin studio before Wright died, a comment during that time from Wright led Dyson to a subsequent internship with Bruce Goff,someone Life magazine reported to be “one of the few US architects whom Frank Lloyd Wright considers creative.” Reflecting on his brief but profound experience with Wright, Dyson said, "My own apprenticeship was with the truth of organic architecture so profoundly matured in the Master of Frank Lloyd Wright"
From 1959 to 1961, Dyson lived and worked at the Goff office in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Goff presented Dyson with a catalog from an exhibition of the work of Purcell and Elmslie, an important American organic architecture firm active from 1907 to 1921 Returning to his native state, Dyson discovered William Gray Purcell was living in Pasadena, California. Purcell hired Dyson as his personal assistant and draftsman from 1962 to 1963. The two men spent much of their time together reviewing the architectural records of Purcell and Elmslie, and discussing progressive design principles. Like that of Frank Lloyd Wright, the office of Purcell and Elmslie descended directly from the seminal architectural firm of Louis Sullivan. In this way, Dyson carries a unique continuity from the Sullivan office through mentorship from Wright and Purcell.
Career
1960s-1970s
Opening an independent practice first in Los Gatos, California and then for a time in Monterey, California, Dyson moved eventually to Fresno, California in 1969. There he established the office of Arthur Dyson and Associates that remains his base of operations. Even before leaving the Goff office, Dyson conceived some of his earliest projects on a large scale and using innovative technologies. The Carlson Apartment Building project proposed a 17-story, 36-unit concrete and glass tower designed to overlook the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica, California. The Cannery Row Hotel project for a site in Monterey, California further developed the grammar of a multi-story residential tower. The subsequent 27-story Chamlian Plaza Hotel project in Fresno, California, featured a sophisticated system of suspended structural engineering, prefabricated construction, and a skin of automated solar tempering for guest rooms that virtually eliminated the possibility of being trapped by fire. The Westrend Visitors Center complex project for a tourist area adjacent to a main highway in the San Joaquin Valley suggested innovative use of textiles in a massive circular canopy supported by a spar tower, a creative structural technique that decades later would be adopted by prominent architects.Residential work provided the most opportunities for construction. Like many organic architects Dyson could encounter difficulties in realizing individually expressive forms when confronted by the demands of conservative building codes, contractors used to bidding on more familiar building forms, and other obstacles. For example, plans for the Lynn Studio and Residence at a site in Carmel, California, pleased the client greatly but remained unbuilt due to resistance toward financing such a unique design. However, a number of built houses won attention in local press and international architectural publications, as well as accumulated design awards. One of the most important of these was the Geringer residence in Kerman, California. Set amid the long straight lines of a commercial vineyard, Dyson turned the house in on itself as a circular form centered on a swimming pool to establish a relaxing vista shared by the main living areas. The Geringer house was later published as an exemplar of former Taliesin apprentices who were expressing the organic design philosophy in fresh, creative works. Dyson also received recognition for the United Packing Company Building , a commercial office building in Fresno, California.
From the very start of his professional practice as an architect Dyson sought to demonstrate architecture as a force for community good, particularly in an unpublicized commitment to bring professional architectural services to the causes of the culturally disadvantaged. Notable unbuilt projects during this period include the Monterey Institute for the Arts project in Pacific Grove, California, and the American Indian Center project in Fresno, California, a museum facility done pro bono to showcase objects relating to the history of the Mono and Yokuts people of central California. In 1971, Dyson developed two schemes for a publicly subsidized children's center constructed in Orange Cove, California that combined both a Head Start and day care operation. By serving at the same time as chairman of the Urban Planning Task Force in Fresno, Dyson commenced a lifelong journey in public service. He also began to lecture at colleges, universities, and museums as outreach for progressive design principles.
1980s
Although commissions were executed for other kinds of structures, residential design dominated the output of the Dyson office during the 1980s. The Bedwell residence in Fresno, California, represents the first in a series of larger homes produced during this decade whose massing occurs through the dynamic intersection of angular forms. Similar broad polygonal forms established the elevations of the Wohlgemuth house and the Simpson residence, both in Fresno, California. Positioned on a low rise above stretches of commercial vineyards, the Jaksha residence in Madera County, California, featured a highly articulated expression of angular design in the floor plan, surrounding decking, and sun-tending trellises. Professional acclaim for the Jaksha design accumulated quickly and the house was published extensively, including twice in Sunset magazine.Dyson also produced buildings with arced forms. The Lencioni house in Sanger, California, produced a particularly unique two story oval form that was also widely recognized. Appearing in popular magazines, professional journals, architectural yearbooks, and most recently in a college textbook, the composition was cited by important critics such as Bruno Zevi as a superior expression of organic architectural principles. In the award-winning Barrett-Tuxford residence in Richland Center, Wisconsin, curvilinear massing was refined through the development of two successive schemes. Unfolding in shape from a natural resonance with the slope of the hillside, the curvature of the earth-enclosed foundation wall embraced an interior space divided into living, working, and sleeping areas. A terrace extruded by the use of earth from the construction excavation extended the living space into an arboreal setting of trees rooted down grade of the building. This house was also lauded by Bruno Zevi in the same article where he extolled the Lencioni house design. Two unbuilt house designs by Dyson used similar oval pod forms. The plan for the Carlson residence in Van Nuys, California, occupied an exceptionally steep building site with an integrated system of cantilevered pods. The Millerton house project in Madera County, California, for a similarly difficult site grouped the pods with a connecting bridge over a rocky cleft and also responded to an environmentally exposed position by incorporating a Teflon roof covering supported by a steel frame for thermal regulation. Dyson further developed a curvilinear form for the Glynns Restaurant in Fresno, California, that incorporated round light tower elements which would evolve and feature significantly in later projects.
Public awareness of Dyson increased. The first international display of his drawings took place at the London museum of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1985, where his projects were included in an exhibit titled The American School of Architecture: The Bruce Goff Legacy. Dyson was again featured in a subsequent installation at the RIBA called 10 California Architects, at which time the RIBA acquired for their permanent collection a Dyson rendering of the Vuelos de Cobre residence then under construction in San Diego County, California. In addition to the multiple publications by Bruno Zevi about Dyson for the European audience, the Japanese architectural periodical A+U: Architecture and Urbanism twice featured a compendium of Dyson projects illustrated in color. These publications coincided with an increased demand for Dyson as a speaker at universities, arts organizations, and professional societies, where he continued to express his commitment to the mutual ends of progressive design and public well-being.
1990s
Residential commissions continued to be an important activity for the Dyson office in the 1990s, but this decade saw a significant growth in substantial institutional and commercial projects. Dyson recognized the need for a collaborative office structure to support the production of drawings, approvals process, and construction administration for more complex projects like churches, schools, libraries, and similar community shared facilities. Joining with other architects who possessed special expertise in such building programs to establish a separate partnership practice eventually called DSJ Architects, Dyson became sole designing architect for the new firm. Under the arrangement, Dyson maintained a steady output of design from his personal practice, as well.The establishment of the DSJ Architects partnership led to immediate work in building houses of religious worship. Although Dyson's personal office received professional awards for a remodeling of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Porterville, California, that integrated functional improvements with new decorative enrichment, his participation in DSJ Architects resulted designs for new facilities for four Christian churches and a Buddhist temple. Two schemes were prepared for the United Japanese Christian Church in Clovis, California, which reveal a reconception of the form between the two versions unusual in Dyson work. The realized building exhibits several features that continue to develop in subsequent projects, notably the sweeping simplicity of sparingly embellished space in a light filled sanctuary and an entrance embracing from high overhead the approach of worshipers with elongated steel trellis forms. In St. Mary's Catholic Church in Sanger, California, the extension of twelve wings in the entrance trellis work refers to the Christian apostles and forms a symbolic canopy over a monumental sixteen foot high statue of the Virgin Mary. The Huber Memorial Chapel for the First Congregational Church in Bakersfield, California, refines the entrance adornment into a single vector of joined steel spars jutting forward from the cornice in a visual reference to hands joined in prayer.
Toward the end of the 1990s, Dyson produced the first in a series of school designs that would develop as a major activity of the DSJ Architects partnership. The Temperance-Kutner Elementary School Library in Clovis, California, introduced a curvilinear form within a narrow site on the campus of an existing school characterized by standard rectangular classroom wings. The Webster Elementary School, in Fresno, California, anchored classrooms and administrative office segments with circular towers whose flowing lines foster a sense of embrace and belonging. Interior colors, textures, and lighting features both relax and stimulate mental activity. In another example of steel trellis forms used as symbolic markers, a white canopy of tubes suspended from dual masts indicates the main entrance. Between 1999 and 2005, both the Temperance-Kutner Library and the Webster School were honored for design excellence by multiple chapters of the Society of American Registered Architects.
In his personal practice, Dyson continued to develop a grammar of curvilinear and angular forms. Notable arc based forms included the Casey residence whose one-story lines reflect the crest of a rise overlooking the Pacific Ocean in La Selva Beach, California, and the compact combination of a live-work building in the Hall residence project for a commercial street corner near the ocean in Cayucos, California, in which vertical curves counterpoint horizontal angular elements in the massing. Three houses are examples of continuity with the grammar of angular composition. The small, economically stringent Peretti residence in rural Clayton, California, used a deck extension with open cable balustrade outside to increase the sense of interior space. Perched on a ridge overlooking the Straight River, the larger Rietz residence in Owatonna, Minnesota, reflected a strong client affinity for straight geometric lines. The Woods residence in Coarsegold, California, used angular prows of copper sheathed wood reach to reach upward, joining views in the rooms to the horizon through windows, clerestories and skylights.
Broader public recognition of Dyson's work increased. The first scholarly exhibition devoted solely to his designs was installed at the Fresno Art Museum in 1994. A similar installation occurred that same year at the gallery of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in Chicago, Illinois, an event which coincided with the release of the first monograph discussing Dyson and his work. Bruno Zevi continued to present Dyson projects to his European readership, and A+U: Architecture and Urbanism in Japan once again featured a section on Dyson. Reviews of his work also appeared in Czech and Turkish periodicals.