Michael Rotondi is an American architect and educator. He co-founded two international practices. He was co-founder of the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 1972, and later, founder of the graduate programs there.
Early life
Born in the Silver Lake/Los Feliz area of Los Angeles to Italian immigrants, Rotondi’s father was an executive chef, his mother a self-taught musician and seamstress. As a child, he would build things with his siblings and, inspired by his godfather who was a contractor, would draw the front elevation of apartment buildings on Los Feliz Blvd, "then reinvent them," imagining what the interior spaces were like. “We were always building, digging underground, digging out hedges in a hill to make a cage. We were always constructing spaces for ourselves, not out of an urge to be builders but to make hideouts.” He recognized houses by Schindler and Frank Lloyd Wright in the neighborhood not by the architects’ names, but because they “just looked better. It looked different than all the rest.” In Junior High School, he took drafting classes where he "fell in love with" isometric drawing and realized his affinity for precision. After high school he attended Los Angeles City College, taking preparatory architecture courses. He then attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Cal Poly Pomona.
In 1972, Rotondi was one of fifty people to leave Cal Poly Pomona and start the Southern California Institute of Architecture with Ray Kappe.. He received his diploma from SCI-Arc in 1973. Since founding SCI-Arc with his colleagues, Rotondi has been active in advancing and growing the school. He started the Graduate Programs, of which he was Director from 1978-1987, then succeeded Founding Director Kappe as the second Director from 1987-1997. “I moved from student to teacher, to graduate school director to director of the institute. I was part of and a witness to this extraordinary process.”
Architectural Practice
Rotondi’s earlier work is highlighted by industrial concepts and materials, and asymmetry, and is considered to be one of the primary figures of Los Angeles' Postmodernism school. He began his professional architecture practice in 1973 with Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall, then from 1974-1976 practiced both independently and in collaboration with Peter de Bretteville and Craig Hodgetts. He formed the partnership Morphosis with Thom Mayne in 1976, where they worked together through 1991. On November 1, 1991 Rotondi founded a new firm, RoTo Architects, with Clark Stevens and Brian Reiff. He views RoTo as "a collaboration of people working in an open practice where ideas move about for anyone’s use without the need to feel proprietary. Authorship is less important than collaboration.”
Current
Rotondi is currently a Distinguished Faculty at SCI-Arc where he teaches design studios, thesis students and seminars on creative imagination. He also teaches at Arizona State University, where he has been a long-time educator, and lectures at universities around the world. His firm RoTo Architects works internationally in a wide range of fields including residential, commercial, cultural, and contemplative, and has been widely published and received numerous awards. His practice also has a strong mentorship approach, where he is “trying to incubate the careers of the people that are here now.” The firm works on both commissioned and speculative projects, the latter being projects that were "invented" for the purposes of teaching are developed in the office, with the aim of turning them into real projects.
Philosophical views
Rotondi’s personal life and career is marked by a philosophical shift occurring in spring of 1989, when he met and began working with designer April Greiman, and weeks later was invited to a two-day discourse with neuroscientists and the Dalai Lama. “Romantic love and compassion hit me within two months. Everything I had known to be true began to dissolve.” What emerged was a “new concept of order,” where he experienced that unity and diversity were simultaneously possible, and realized creativity “did not have to be the product of a tormented soul,” the motivation could be love and not fear. Meditation began to inform his teaching and practice. “In order to discover the building, you have to step back and not impose your will on it. You have to become a transparent medium that allows it all to come forth and pass through you.” Helping something to naturally become, is “one of the hardest things to sustain.” In teaching and architecture, his basic objective is to bridge intellectual and spiritual practice, and “outwardly manifest my inner journey.” He views his role in life as an "evolutionary imperative" to move the species forward. In a description of architectural practice, Rotondi stated: "The most inventive work comes from people who have a beginner’s mind... In a beginner’s mind you’re trying to provisionally remove expectations from the process and develop the innocence that you had as a child.” In a symposium to students at the University of Utah, he stated his five principles:
The importance of the continual process of discovery
The paradigm shifts in science that deepen and alter our understanding of the way that our world operates and our position in it
Closing the gap between ideas emerging in a new paradigm and when they are taken into architecture
“The works come out of all of this. They are intended to be documents of the process. The Promise of Architecture.” Rotondi views architecture as a platform, where the "architectural mind" can be developed by anyone, particularly in design disciplines, to solve problems in the world: “the ultimate test of any idea is to construct it.”
Among other honors and awards, Michael Rotondi received the Richard J Neutra Medal for Professional Excellence from Cal Poly Pomona in 2014, the AIA/LA Gold Medal for Presidential Honors in 2009, and in 1992 was honored by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters with their Academy-Institute Award in Architecture. Between 1981-1991 while practicing at Morphosis, the firm received 12 awards from Progressive Architecture magazine and 11 from the American Institute of Architects.
