From Peter Papademetriou

Subject: RE: Doug

It was a brief note last week from a former student of mine, Stephen Fox, who lives in Houston and passed on a notice from the UH Dean announcing Doug's untimely death. . .I was in shock, in light of Doug's notice about the impending 60th (having just had mine in May). I'm attaching the last photo he sent in his last e-mail to me, for those who may not have it.

Doug and I were at Yale together, I was a class behind but we took some classes together, including one in City Planning on Commercial Development. . .I still remember the final requirement was a team project (involving students from the Law School, City Planning and Architecture)that was a response to an RFP for a small mall; the team met the weekend before the project was due, and Doug's suggestion was that we could either spend another week and be slightly better, or we could wrap it up in two days and get on with the rest of what we had to do.

One requirement was to show five small buildings, and Doug suggested we do a design charette, compare the results and choose a scheme for each. I went to the photo lab and got a GraLab timer, set it for ten minutes, and off we went. He was right: we weren't the greatest, we were far from the worst, but we were the ones done a week early.

Yale had an exhibition on Frederick Kiesler (the "Endless House"), and Doug had never heard of him: he asked me who the hell he was. My reply was that Kiesler had done nothing, but had convinced the Museum of Modern Art that he was a genius, so he was supported for his entire life. . .Doug thought that was really cool. . .I always thought there was a connection.

Hugh Hardy had his apartment published in the NY Times, and Doug was livid; I said, why don't you call Barbara Plumb? Doug sold her on the idea. . .only problem was, he and Carol hadn't done anything to their apartment and Barbara was going to come up in four days. . .I remember pulling my Greek rug and Marcel Breuer chair down three flights of stairs, to join the rest of the props that they ran around New Haven collecting. . .one of the photos has a big black arrow wrapping across the ceiling and down the wall to a wall-mounted phone, serving as a 'blackboard' for telephone numbers written in chalk (you DO remember chalk?!!?). . .mine is the one on the lower left, marked as "Papa" (C. Ray Smith published it in his book SUPERMANNERISM about ten years later).

I visited Doug in Summer 1968 in his I.M. Pei apartment in Washington, DC; it was the one that had supergraphics obliquely painted over the windows, but I can't remember if you read them from the inside, or the outside. Doug had a stack of 45-rpm Oldies, and was annoyed that I was guessing the song from the first note. . .

In Houston, we watched Doug and Chip build the House o' The Future for Marilyn Lubetkin on Mo-Jo Lake; I remember a Hudson Hornet at the site that was in perfect tune, forget who owned it. . .

The memories just go on and on. . .I apologize for doing likewise. I can only recall one quote from a review I wrote of a show Doug did at Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum:

"Ant Farm brings us the future as it really was".

PETER C. PAPADEMETRIOU
Professor & Graduate Program Director
New Jersey School of Architecture
New Jersey Institute of Technology