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Architect Raimund Abraham Killed in LA Crash

Following his lecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the New York-based, Austrian born architect passed away in a car accident early Thursday morning.

From The Architect's Newspaper -- Interior Design, 3/4/2010 12:00:00 AM

FromThe Architect's Newspaper: Raimund Abraham, 77, the Austrian-born architect and professor closely linked with Cooper Union and the Pratt Institute, died [today] in Los Angeles. Abraham was a visiting faculty member at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and according to the Institute died “early Thursday in a car crash in Downtown Los Angeles” following a lecture, The Profanation of Solitude. A favorite of Copper Union Dean John Hejduk, Abraham helped make the school a hotbed of theory and design. With his long time interest in drawing, he influenced generations of students.

Though he is known for his iconic competition drawings, which were never executed, he did build the Rainbow Plaza in Niagara Falls, the interior renovation of the Anthology Film Archives in New York and, most famously, the Austrian Cultural Forum on East 52nd street in New York in 2002. He won the commission to design this building by arguing before the Austrian Parliament, telling a reporter at the time that “I fought for the importance of the Republic of Austria supporting radical architecture, not some mediocre office building.”

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