The word decoration ?was almost a swear word? to her Elizabeth ?Lisl? Scheu Close came into the architecture world at a time when female practitioners were a rarity. After graduating from MIT in 1935, she struggled to find work. When one firm told her that she would be ?a distraction at the drawing table,? Richard Neutra said he?d hire her, but she would have to pay him $20 a month for the privilege.
Instead, she established a firm in Minnesota with her soon-to-be husband, Winston Close, and found slightly more acceptance, yet was still regarded as an oddity. When the two wed, the local newspaper ran a story with the headline ?Architect Marries Architect,? then a situation that the public found so unexpected and odd that they may as well have been two extraterrestrials.
But if closed-mindedness and sexism bothered Close, it didn?t seem to impact her work or convictions about modern design. An unabashed advocate of the International Style and stripped-down design, ?the word ?decoration? was almost a swear word to her,? according to Gar Hargens, an architect who would later acquire the Closes? practice.
The architect spent decades as lead designer and head of a wildly successful practice that built hundreds of residences and commercial practices around Minneapolis. She focused on the essence, the purity of a space?like adornments or frivolous ornamentation, other people?s hang-ups were simply uninteresting and unimportant. She was an architect who just happened to b...