OBITUARY: DAVID RINEHARTBorn March 31, 1928, died June 15, 2016
La Jolla, California
David Rinehart, well-known architect and former professor in the Schools of Architecture at the University of Oregon, and at the University of Southern California and Fellow of the American Society of Architects died peacefully at his home in La Jolla, California on June 15 after a six-year struggle with aphasia, dementia and Parkinson’s. He was 88 years old.
Rinehart grew up on a farm in Ohio near the Indiana border but from the age of 10 his family assumed he'd become an artist. He entered the School of Fine Arts at Indiana University when he was 17. He graduated, served his time in the U.S. Army in post-World War II Germany and came home to get an advanced degree not in art, but architecture. Given an interview at the famed School of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, he talked himself in, entering as an upperclassman though he lacked the usual academic credentials. At Penn in 1957 Rinehart won the Arthur Spayd Brooke Memorial Prize for distinguished work in architectural design.
His teacher and mentor at Penn was Louis I. Kahn, one of the great architects of the 20th Century, and upon graduation he worked in Kahn's studio for several years, collaborating with Kahn on the famed Salk Institute in La Jolla (1960), a landmark of North American architecture. In 1964 Rinehart moved to Montreal where in concert with architect Moshe Safdie the concept-breaking residential project Habitat ’67 was designed for the Montreal World’s Fair. In 1967 he moved west to teach at the University of Oregon in Eugene, encouraging other Kahn-inspired architects to become members of the faculty. Desiring to practice as well as teach, in 1970 he joined longtime friend and architectural partner Jack MacAllister, and Stan Ring, establishing a firm in La Jolla (later Rancho Santa Fé) which in 1973 created the master plan for the Telluride Ski Resort.
In addition to teaching, from 1980 to 1986 he worked at Bobrow/Thomas in Westwood, and in 1986 as Principal of Design, he was also joined by MacAllister and Peter Stazicker to open the Los Angeles office of Anshen + Allen, a well-known San Francisco firm.
In 1993 he was chosen by Jonas Salk to design the Salk Institute’s East Building. Other noted work includes the award winning Bourns Hall at UC Riverside which received a national design award from the American Institute of Architects in 1996, the Molecular Sciences Building at UCLA, the Mingei International Folk Art Museum, and the Shiley Eye Institute in San Diego.
As a well-respected teacher and mentor (Oregon 1967-1970, USC 1975-1979), he was passionate and accessible, leaving behind two generations of architects who were informed by his example, and legacy, seeing light as a basic material in revealing form and structure. “I see space,” he said, “as a receptacle of light and light as the spent force that creates presence.”
Light, honesty and elegance also defined Rinehart as a person. He never lost touch with his roots in Ohio or the honesty of a plowed field, and he was powerfully affected by certain beauties. Few would write “My seminal architectural experience occurred in 1998 at the age of 70.” He said this after traveling with friends in Tuscany to the rural Romanesque church of Sant’Antimo. He was deeply moved when he experienced in it’s interior “the complete brilliance and union of sunlight, stone, space, and being, each the other, all – one.”
When his dementia and aphasia were diagnosed in 2010, his response was to embrace and learn from it rather than fear the changes. A series of drawings, sketches, and watercolors of persons and places resulted, and an exhibition of those pieces appeared at the Palos Verde Art Center in late 2014. He continued drawing, painting, and playing Bill Evans arrangements on the piano until Parkinson’s made those pleasures impossible.
David is survived by Tony Rasmussen, his partner of 45 years, his sister Joyce, niece Jolynn, nephew Gary, and their families. Cremation at Legacy, 7043 University Avenue, La Mesa, CA., www.legacyfuneralcare.com; contact trasmussen@ucsd.edu. The family requests no flowers or contributions at this time. A memorial will be announced at a later date.
