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At Pratt Institute, Her Practice: the Architecture of Debora Reiser celebrates the life and contributions of an inimitable, late architect
The inimitable architect, educator, mentor, and feminist Debora Reiser passed away just over a year ago, after a 75-year career in architecture. A new retrospective at Pratt Institute, Her Practice: the Architecture of Debora Reiser, celebrates the late trailblazers life and all that she contributed. The exhibitions location inside the Hazel and Robert Siegel Gallery at Higgins Hall is fitting: Reiser graduated from Pratt Institute in 1948, where she was one of just a few women in her class. She went on to lead RUR Architecture together with her son, Jesse Reiser, and daughter-in-law, Nanako Umemoto.Both Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto helped bring Her Practice: the Architecture of Debora Reiser to life as curators and exhibition designers, respectively.Her Practice: the Architecture of Debora Reiser has ephemera which introduces Debora Reiser to the public. (Courtesy Pratt Institute)Her Practice formally opened on September 12. That night, Reisers friends and family members sat down with Pratt faculty and students to discuss her legacy.At Hazel and Robert Siegel Gallery, visitors can see photographs of the late architect when she was just out of architecture school, around the time she worked in the office of George Nemeny and Abraham Geller, two contemporaries of Marcel Breuer. Other ephemera including publications, drawings, and furniture share details of her life story. The exhibition is meant to pay tribute to Reisers unwavering belief in modernisms aspirations to a free architecture of light, air, and movement, the curatorial statement reads. Standing just short of five feet she nonetheless projected a commanding presence to clients and contractors especially necessary in the context of male-dominated mid-century America, it continued. As a woman architect in the early 50s she had to be relentless.The exhibitions features photography and news clippings of Reisers work (Courtesy Pratt Institute)Jesse Reiser designed the exhibition with Nanako Umemoto, Tyler Armstrong, Hisa Matsunaga, Tilok Costa, with assistance by Logan West, Linus Coersmeier, and Austin Hsu. Logan West produced the film that accompanies the exhibition. Her Practices timeline diagram was by Dana Cupkova.In contrast to the singular genius of the so-called Modern Masters, Reisers practice of Total Design always embraced the heterogeneous and the open and always built upon a continuous dialogue between architect and clientform and space, Jesse Reiser said.Her Practice: the Architecture of Debora Reiser is on view through November 15.
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