Wu, King-lui, 1918-2002.

Yale Professor of Architecture
 
 

Education:

B.Arch., M.Arch., Harvard University, 1945
 

Obituaries:

from Yale University
from New York Times
 

YALE News Release
CONTACT: Dorie Baker 203-432-8553 or Gila Reinstein 203-432-1325 #19

For Immediate Release: August 16, 2002

Obituary: King-lui Wu

New Haven, Conn. -- King-lui Wu, professor emeritus of architecture at Yale University, died of pneumonia in New Haven on August 15, 2002, at the age of 84.

Wu was born on March 25, 1918, in Canton, China, where he was educated at Lingnan Middle School. After coming to the United States, he studied at Yale, then earned both his bachelor's (1944) and master's (1945) degrees at Harvard, where he was a student of Walter Gropius.

His long tenure as a teacher of architecture at Yale began in 1945. During sabbaticals from Yale, he was invited by Sir Leslie Martin to teach at the University of Cambridge in England in 1974, and in 1977, he was a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wu served on a number of advisory boards and committees, including the Harvard University Graduate School of Design Alumni Council, the Planning Society at the University of Liverpool and the American Institute of Architects Committee for Architectural Education. In New Haven, Wu was a president of the Elizabethan Club at Yale and served on the Josef Albers Foundation. As a goodwill ambassador, he received a medal from the government of Finland for promoting friendship between that country and the U.S.

Wu's writing has been published in Architectural Record, The Architectural Review, Werk and numerous other periodicals and newspapers. He received Architectural Record's award for Distinguished Houses in 1966 and 1975. In addition to two dozen houses throughout the United States, Wu had many outstanding projects in New Haven. Studios for the Creative Arts Workshop, doctors' offices, a Baptist Church, the Yale student Manuscript Club and Chinese restaurants are notable among them. Locally, his legacy also includes commercial buildings in Winsted; a recreation facility in Brewster, New York; a factory conversion in Fair Haven; a school for mentally disabled children in Hamden and an apartment building in Bronxville, New York. Farther afield, Wu designed private houses, an office and apartment building in Hong Kong; and, in 1947, 37 buildings for Yali Middle School and Changsha Medical Center in Changsha, China. He collaborated, as a daylight consultant with the firm of Tai-Soo Kim for the Museum of Modern Art in Seoul, South Korea, and for an Art Center at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. He did several projects with Philip Johnson in New York, and on a number of occasions collaborated with his close friend Josef Albers on New Haven buildings.

Notable among the variety of courses he taught at Yale were "The Art of Chinese Gardens" and the very popular "Daylight and Architecture."

The list of celebrated architects who were once Wu's students include current Yale Architecture School Dean Robert A.M. Stern, Charles Gwathmey, Robert Kliment, Der Scutt, Stanley Tigerman, Thomas Beeby, Jaquelin Robertson, David M. Childs, James Stewart Polshek, Maya Lin, John M.Y. Lee, Michael Timchula, Norman Foster, Richard Rodgers, Myles Weintraub, Vincent Scully, Charles Brewer, Keith Kroeger, Hugh Newall Jacobsen, Frank Lupo, Daniel Rowan, William Porter, Alec Purves, Herbert Newman M.J. Long and Giovanni Passanella.

On Wu's retirement from Yale in 1988, former student and then New York Times Architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote, "Your continued presence has been the one thing on which students, faculty, alumni and observers of the School could count. But it is more than just your physical presence-I think you have given generations of students a sense that the practice of architecture was a matter of integrity and commitment and not of frivolity. You have brought students into a heavy and profound world without being heavy-handed yourself, and I think they have come out of it feeling that architecture has a sense of grace."

He is survived by his wife Vivian of Hamden, Connecticut; daughter Yeng and son Loli and daughter-in-law Vivian, all of New York City; and daughter Mai of New Haven.

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 Posted on Mon, Aug. 26, 2002

King-lui Wu, influential Yale architecture professor
BY DAVID W. DUNLAP
New York Times Service

King-lui Wu, an architect whose students at the Yale School of Architecture over four decades included some of the most prominent designers of their time, died on Aug. 15 at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He was 84 and lived in Hamden, Conn.

As his first principle in architecture, Wu prized daylight, which he called the ''most noble of natural phenomena'' in the synopsis of his long-running course Daylight and Architecture. His emphasis on using natural light in the design of buildings came during an era dominated by fluorescent fixtures and artificial illumination.

''Architecture had become completely energy dependent,'' recalled one of his former students, Robert A.M. Stern. ``The way one lit a building was that one flipped a switch. He emphasized that buildings needed to breathe and that natural light brought them to life.''

The breathing was not just metaphorical. James Stewart Polshek, another former student, recalled an influential home designed by Wu for Benjamin Dupont in Woodbridge, Conn., in which the windows were sealed and the ventilation was handled by hinged panels below the glass, allowing for almost total freedom in the windows' size and placement.

Wu was born in Guangzhou, China, and received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Harvard. He began teaching architecture at Yale in 1945 and continued until 1988 -- ''one of the great threads of the school,'' said Stern, who is now the dean.

His long, quiet tenure and courtly manner contrasted with a changing cast of large and sometimes clashing egos on the faculty. ''I don't think the School of Architecture would have maintained its stability if it wasn't for him,'' said Charles Gwathmey, another former student. ``Really, he was the rock through all the transitions.''

In his own practice, Wu collaborated with the artist Josef Albers on the Dupont house and the Mount Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in New Haven. In 1962, he designed the headquarters of Manuscript, the only senior society at Yale to be housed in a Modernist building.

Wu is survived by his wife, Vivian Wei-Chu Wu; two daughters, Yeng-Tse Wu of Manhattan and Mai-Tse Wu of New Haven; and a son, Pei-Tse Wu of Manhattan.