Material_Anthropology_(Revealed)

“I don’t want to retire. I expect to be carried off on my drafting board.”

He was born with a deformity in his right arm that required amputation. There were many things he couldn’t do with one hand, but he could draw, and he did, becoming one of the foremost architectural draftsmen of the 20th century.

Invited by Frank Lloyd Wright to apprentice with him at Taliesin, he studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Rapson immersed himself in Cranbrook’s interdisciplinary approach to metalworking, sculpture, photography, graphic design, architecture, city planning, and textile design. It was at Cranbrook that Ralph rendered his first design for the ‘Rapson Rapid Rocker,’ a masterpiece of modern furniture design that debuted formally as part of the Knoll Furniture line in a 1945. It was one of hundreds of furniture designs he produced for Knoll and others over the next decade.

Ralph was recruited in 1951 to design the first modern American embassies in Europe. Over the next two years, he worked on ten embassy, consulate, and staff housing projects, including the Stockholm and Copenhagen embassies.

In 1954, he was recruited to become Dean of the University of Minnesota’s School of Architecture. He was the first dean of a school of architecture to combine educational administration with an architectural practice. Over the thirty years of his tenure, he molded the leadership of two generations of architectural practice, cultivated a student body possessing peerless drawing skills, elevating Minnesota into the top half-dozen architectural programs in the nation.