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| Fred Linn Osmon | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Las Vegas, Nevada |
| 🎓 Alma mater | Washington University, Saint Louis (BA 1956). University of Pennsylvania (M.Arch., 1962) |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Known for | Sonoran Desert Architect |
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Fred Linn Osmon (born December 2, 1932) is an American architect and professor of architecture based in Cave Creek, Arizona. He is primarily known for the homes he designed in the Sonoran Desert.[1]
Early life, education & military service[edit]
Osmon was born December 2, 1932 in Las Vegas, Nevada, the son of midwesterners Elisabeth Osmon (née Linnemeyer), a stenographer,[2] and Fredrick Emmet Osmon, a copper miner.[3] His father was a sergeant in the US Army from 1912 to 1919 whose service included time in Hawaii as well as on the Mexican Border in the Pancho Villa Expedition under General John J. Pershing.[4][5] His father also worked as a high rigger and dynamiter building Hoover Dam, then known as the Boulder Dam construction site.
Osmon was raised in Saint Louis, Missouri[6] with his mother and her extended family, after his father died of tuberculosis in 1937.[1][7][4][8]
Osmon earned his Bachelor of Architecture degree from Washington University in Saint Louis,[9] where he spent two weeks with Buckminster Fuller, "building a dome and listening to his powerful 10 hour lectures."[4] Osmon won his first architecture award as a student in 1955 from the Home Builders Association of Greater Saint Louis.[10] After graduation in 1956, Osmon joined the US Air Force, training as a pilot. He was discharged as a second lieutenant in 1959.[1][4]
Career[edit]
Following his time in the the Air Force, Osmon entered the architectural field working in several top architectural firms including Hugh Stubbins in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and two New York locations: Curtis and Davis, and the John Carl Warnecke firm.[1][4][10]
Osmon was impressed with Louis Kahn's philosophy of discovering “what a building wants to be," leading him to obtain his master of architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962.[1][4][10]
Osmon worked at Educational Facilities Laboratories of the Ford Foundation, rejoined the Warnecke firm (this time in San Francisco), and then spent 5 years on staff the architectural school faculty of the University of California, Berkeley. While teaching, he continued to work on architectural projects for schools, migrant labor camps, the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development, and private residences.[1][4][10]
In 1973 Osmon began his 30 year architectural practice in Arizona, also teaching at Arizona State University.[1] In 2006 Osmon's work was included in the Design and the Arts Library Archives and Special Collections of Arizona State University.[7][4]
Focus[edit]
Osmon designed a series of experimental homes (four were personal research, built for his own use) to study the way the residences 'lived.'[1] "I'm making this an experiment in the sense that you learn as much from the failures as from the successes," he noted.[2] His final home, Osmon IV, is comprised of four separate pavilions united within a desert garden. Osmon felt it would 'make families stronger. Now people are jammed into homes with no privacy," he maintained. "The standard home leads to divorce because [a couple] can't get away from each other," said Osmon in 2005.[3]
Another motif of Osmon's career was the experience of color. "Colors are more than just decorative," he maintained.[3]
"One of the most distinctive aspects to architect Fred Linn Osmon's work is the amazing way color drives his design. I find it remarkable that color is a fundamental aspect of his creative architectural process and not merely an after-thought." Deborah Koshinsky, head of the Architecture + Environmental Design Library at Arizona State University's Tempe Campus[3]
In Osmon's final home, Osmon IV, he proposes that he "took color all the way." "Separate from the house is [his] Grotto—two exterior roofless rooms ten feet high... The building's only function is to meditate on color. You enter along a severe colorless corridor of rusted steel that brings you to the rooms with walls of strong color. The reaction of visitors to this confrontation has ranged between a smile and a frown."[1]
Awards[edit]
- Honor Award 1987–American Institute of Architects–Skane House[7]
- Phoenix Visual Improvement Award 1987–Lakewood Kwik Stop[7]
- Environmental Excellence Award 1985–Valley Forward Association, Rabinowitz House[7]
- Merit Award 1984 –Arizona Society of the American Institute of Architects – Rabinowitz House[7]
- Excellence in Planning and Design—Architectural Record Houses of 1979 – Osmon House[7]
- Award of Merit–Foundation for San Francisco Architectural Heritage –Center for Educational Development[7]
- Bay Area A.I.A. Honor Award 1974 –Center for Educational Development (with Esherick, Homsey, Dodge & Davis Architects)[7]
- Award of Exceptional Distinction–State of California 1966–Temporary Communities for Farm Worker Families[7]
- Sea Ranch Design Award 1974–Nimnicht House[7]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Arizona Architecture from the Archives: Fred Linn Osmon, Design and the Arts Library Archives and Special Collections, Arizona State University
- ↑ 1930 United States Federal Census, Saint Louis, Saint Louis County, Missouri; Sheet no. 16B, ward 9, block 2084, family 304, dwelling 185, line 78; April 14, 1930.
- ↑ 1930 United States Federal Census, Bisbee, Cochise, Arizona; Page: 9B; Enumeration District: 0006, ward 2, dwelling 157, family 219, line 64; April 11, 1930.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Osmon, Fred Linn. I Traveled as an Architect: a short (auto)biography, May 2017. Design and the Arts Library Archives and Special Collections, Arizona State University, Collection #: MS MSS 29, Box 3, Folder 27, 2017.
- ↑ National Cemetery Administration, U.S. Veterans Gravesites, ca.1775-2006, Nationwide Gravesite Locator, 2006, Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com
- ↑ 1940 United States Federal Census, Saint Louis, Saint Louis County, Missouri; Sheet no. 8B, ward 9, block 20, family 304, house number 2512, line 62; April 9, 1940.
- ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 Riley-Huff, Debra. "LibGuides:Arizona Architecture from the Archives: Fred Linn Osmon". libguides.asu.edu.
- ↑ California, Death Index, 1905-1939. Ancestry.com, 2013, Provo, UT, USA.
- ↑ Washington University Yearbook, Saint Louis Missouri, 1955, p282.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Builders Name Award Winners, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, January 30, 1955, Page 92.
Further reading[edit]
- Osmon, F. L. (1973) Patterns for Designing Children's Centers: A Report from Educational Facilities Laboratories, The MIT Press, 128 pages, ISBN: 978-0262650076
- Search for the perfect desert-house is fruitful. Arizona Republic, February 26, 2005, pp 81 & 84.
- The Fun House, Balloons and bubbles make a home. Arizona Republic, June 29, 1986, pp173 & 178.
- Architects home assimilates desert. Arizona Republic, June 17, 1979, p 165.
- Getting to the Point, High rises hide clutter in tent tops. Arizona Republic, August 28, 1988, p 156.
- Building with Color. Arizona Republic, June 17, 1984, p 175.
- Cave Creek urged to decide on image for tourist project. Arizona Republic, October 20, 1990, pp 125 & 129.
- Bonnell, M. (1974, August 23) Cash with Nature Seen. Arizona Republic, p. 134.
- Doerfler, Susan (1989, May, 21) Tempe honors 40 for buildings that beautify community. Arizona Republic, pp 164-165.
- Display salutes Carefree architect. Arizona Republic, February 15, 1987, Pages 186.
- Frerichs, Doug (1990, April 27) Activists say real test of Earth Day still to come. Arizona Republic, p 132.
- Patterson, A. (1981, September 20) Architect interprets the West. Arizona Republic, pp 114-5.
- Osmon, F. L. (2005) Toward an architecture without permanent form? The projects and ideas of Fred Linn Osmon, architect. Carefree, Arizona, Fred Linn Osmon, OCLC Number 887850554.
- Osmon, Fred Linn. I Traveled as an Architect: a short (auto)biography, May 2017. Design and the Arts Library Archives and Special Collections, Arizona State University, Box 3, Folder 27, 2017.
- Doerfler, Susan (1992, August 9) A Home on the Move. Arizona Republic, pp S1, S11.
- Osmon, Fred (1982, January) The Art of Artifice. Landscape Architecture, pp 59-61.
External links[edit]
- Design and the Arts Library Archives and Special Collections, Arizona State University: Fred Linn Osmon [https://libguides.asu.edu/azarchitectureexhibit/Osmon]
- Design and the Arts Library Archives and Special Collections, Arizona State University: Fred Linn Osmon, Finding Aid [https://lib.asu.edu/sites/default/files/architecture/OsmonFindingAid.pdf]
Category:20th-century American architects
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