The Walker Guest House in Sanibel Island, Florida, is an example of Paul Rudolph’s early Sarasota Modern period.
Photographer: Ezra Stoller/Esto
For a Master of Brutalist Provocations, a Modest Museum Appraisal
The first museum survey of modernist architect Paul Rudolph dwells in the margins of his polarizing works, many of which now exist only on paper.
Nothing remains of the cabanas that Paul Rudolph designed for the Sanderling Beach Club in Sarasota, Florida. A series of white, low-slung structures with vaulted ceilings that the architect designed early in his career in 1952, the huts were wiped out after Hurricane Helene reached Central Florida on Sept. 26.
While the destruction of the modernist beach club is only a footnote in the devastation caused by the storm, it’s a loss for the postwar school of architecture known as Sarasota Modern. It’s also a loss for fans of Rudolph, a modernist architect who reached the height of his profession in the 1960s but found his influence and reputation fade before the end of the decade.