American architect, educator, writer, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991. He is often labeled as the father of “postmodernism.” His status as an educator was important for a generation of American architects who read his books or studied with him at one of several universities.
Moore, who was gay, preferred bold, colorful design elements, including striking color combinations, supergraphics, stylistic eclecticism, and the use of non-traditional materials such as plastic, (aluminized) PET film, platinum tiles, and neon signs. His work often provokes arousal, challenges norms, and can lean toward kitsch.
He earned his PhD in 1957. His Doctoral dissertation, “Water and Architecture”, was a study of the importance of water in shaping the experience of place. The dissertation is significant for being one of the first pieces of architectural scholarship to draw from the work of Gaston Bachelard. Moore used some of the material in his later book, The Poetics of Gardens (1988).
In 1959, Moore took a teaching position at the University of California, Berkeley. There he teamed with Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull, Jr. and Richard Whittaker to form a new and influential firm: MLTW. They were among the first American architects to favor contextual designs–fitting well with the urban fabric of San Francisco–over harsh Modernist buildings that were alien to the texture of the city.
Moore rose to become chairman and professor of architecture at Berkeley in five years. From 1965 to 1970 he was Dean of the Yale School of Architecture.
Many of Moore’s students became leading architects of the next generation, including Mark Simon, Buzz Yudell, Gerald Allen, Liz Plater-Zyberk, Andres Duany, David Sellers, and Turner Brooks.
While at Yale Moore wrote a useful residential design book, The Place of Houses (1974). One of his last books, Body, Memory and Architecture (1977), not only introduced new psychological and anthropological ideas into design theory, it also anticipated today’s revolution in neuroscience, and the theory of “embodied cognition.”
In 1975, Moore moved to the University of California, Los Angeles where he continued teaching. Finally, in 1985, he became the O’Neil Ford Centennial Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. He died at his home in Austin of a heart attack on 13 December 1993 at age 68.
Link to Wikipedia biography