GORLIN, ALEXANDER

GORLIN, ALEXANDER (1955– ), U.S. architect. Gorlin is a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture and Cooper Union School of Architecture. The firm Alex Gorlin, Architects was founded in 1987. Gorlin taught at the Yale School of Architecture as a critic from 1980 to 1990. His early work was influenced by Classicism but he gradually became influenced by Modernism. Gorlin is now known for his Urban Modernism. With unusual versatility, he has designed projects in New York, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Denver, Colorado, and Palm Beach, Florida. He was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship in 1983–84, the Cooper Union Distinguished Alumni Award in 1998, and the Chicago Athenaeum Architecture Award for the Yale University Boathouse. He served as a member of the board of directors of City Arts, New York City, and held a summer internship at Cooper Union in New York in 1994. In January 2002, Architectural Digest named Gorlin one of the Top 100 designers and architects in the U.S. The Ruskin Place townhouse in Seaside, Florida, won the 1996 New York State AIA Award for Excellence in Design. Chosen for his knowledge of Jewish tradition and expertise in synagogue design, Gorlin planned the one million dollar remodeling of the United Synagogue of Hoboken, New Jersey, and also the North Shore Synagogue in Long Island, New York. Gorlin was the architect for the North Shore Hebrew Academy, King's Point, New York, and a synagogue for the Young Israel of Plainview, New York. Always imaginative, he once designed a tree house, and created plans for a city apartment for architect daniel libeskind in the Tribeca district of Manhattan. In Denver, Colorado, Gorlin designed a 10,000 square foot   house built as a cross between an Irish barn and an Indian stone dwelling. Gorlin said his inspiration came in part from Dante's "Inferno." By contrast, on tiny Allison Island off the shore of South Beach, Miami, Florida, Gorlin built for the AQUA planned community a midrise building which is an example of the new "Tropical Urbanism" that is part of the "New Urbanism." One of the features of this trend spreads the highrise building out horizontally. Gorlin's building is 11 stories high with ample space around it, wide areas of window glass, and spacious balconies. According to Vincent Scully, noted architectural historian, "Gorlin's work is simple open-hearted appreciation and wonder, an excitement that enlivens everything." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: P. Goldberger, Alexander Gorlin: Buildings and Projects (1997). (Betty R. Rubenstein (2nd ed.)