It?s time to stop perpetuating the myth of the lone genius My first cover story was a profile of Richard Meier for Graphis Magazine. It was 1998 and the Getty Center was about to open. The magazine did not have the budget to send me to Los Angeles, but it had photos, so I was dispatched to Meier?s office on Manhattan?s west side to see what I could get out of the man in an hour.
Meier has recently been in the news as the first major architect to be publicly accused of sexual harassment by a cadre of former employees. He is taking a six-month leave from the approximately 50-person firm that bears his name. He didn?t sexually harass me; I was only patronized.
In the first (white) Meier monograph, John Hejduk quotes Herman Melville?s Moby-Dick on the meaning of Meier?s signature color, white: ?... the thought of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, [serves] to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds.? In the profile, I emphasized the physical manifestation of that chromatic control:

And Meier definitely knows how to channel terror. When you step off the elevator into Meier?s Tenth Avenue offices in New York, the wall in front of you bears no corporate logo. Not even a name. It?s merely white.
Inside the office there is one chair for a visitor, set into a gap in the parade of huge white models of Meier?s work. A high white wall blocks any view of the rest of the office. The three employees that c...