Faculty Fellows: John Comazzi

John Comazzi, Assistant Professor of Architecture, College of Design, Dayton Hudson Faculty Fellow, 2007-2008

The Architectural Eye of Balthazar Korab

Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1926, Balthazar Korab began his architecture education at the Polytechnic in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II. Following the occupation by the Soviet Union and major political upheaval, Korab left Budapest in 1949 “in search of freedom,” and began a life-long career of travel and work designing and photographing architecture, landscapes and urban conditions. This proposal is for preparation of a book about Korab's commissioned and non commissioned work documenting projects from such practitioners as Frank Lloyd Wright, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, Charles and Ray Eames and Minoru Yamasaki, Roche+Dinkeloo, Dan Kiley, and his career-long relationships with such places as Lafayette Park in Detroit, Columbus, Indiana and the Cranbrook Academy .

While Korab's work has been exhibited and published widely there has never been a publication dedicated to his life, career and practice as a photographer of architecture.

The value of presenting a retrospective publication of Korab's photography is, in large part, due his career-long relationship to the growth and development of architecture and urbanism in the Midwest United States during the middle of the twentieth century. This ‘Midwest Modernism' will provide much of the visual source material for Comazzi's publication and will also provide archival access to the urban and rural conditions that developed during the building activities following the Second World War. Much of this landscape is currently either disappearing or undergoing major physical transformations, making Korab's photography all the more relevant as a tool for preserving the images of these unique places and eras.

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