Lee F. Hodgden

Obituary
LEE F. HODGDEN
ITHACA - Lee F. Hodgden, 78, died at home on Tuesday, August 24, 2004. Lee had a long and varied career as an architect and architectural educator. He graduated from the University of Kansas in 1946, after two years off for military service in WWII. During a year with the Japanese occupation, he gained a deep appreciation of Japanese architecture as well as making many friends, including a Japanese priest who taught him to play Japanese chess.In 1949, he received the Master of Architecture degree from M.I.T after a year of studying under Lawrence Anderson and Alvar Aalto, a visiting professor from Finland.He then taught for a year at North Carolina State College, where he also worked in the office of Matthew Nowicki and became associated with Buckminster Fuller. This began a lifelong interest in the complex geometry of architectural structure. Lee was the first to take the discontinuous compression structure beyond four members, to Bucky's great delight. In the last months of his life he completed a new structural system and built a model of it.From North Carolina, Lee moved to San Antonio, Texas, where he worked in the office of O'Neil Ford, being in charge of the design of numerous housing projects. In 1954, he received a Fulbright grant to study public housing in Finland. However, when he arrived, Alvar Aalto, with whom he had studied at M.I.T., hired him as the first American to work in his office.Lee returned to the U. S. to teach at the University of Texas. Here he became one of a group of pioneering architectural educators known as "The Texas Rangers", working with Bernard Hoesli, Werner Seligmann, John Shaw and Colin Rowe, all to become prestigious educators who later spent time at Cornell. Two years at The University of Oregon followed, where Lee began a lifelong association and friendship with Alvin Boyarski, who became an eminent educator in England.Lee came to Cornell University in 1961, where he spent most of his years teaching until his retirement 1995, as professor emeritus. During this time, he also taught at the University of Chicago, Princeton, and Cooper Union. Lee returned frequently to travel and study in Europe and Finland, either on his own or leading groups of students.Throughout his teaching career, Lee was known as an exciting and inspiring teacher. Two students, Michael Dennis and Fred Koetter, undergraduate students at Texas and Oregon respectively, followed him to Cornell for graduate work and later became well known architects.Shortly before he died, one of his former students reminisced to Lee's wife about his teaching, saying "The students who were assigned to his section always considered themselves lucky, exulting 'I got Lee!'"Lee's brother, Jerry, who lives in Colorado, had this story to add: "When Lee came to the University of Colorado to speak, the chairman of the school of architecture at both the Boulder and Denver campuses were former students of his. Lee's lecture drew a standing room only audience in a sizable auditorium with latecomers listening from the hallways. At the reception which followed, he was deluged with requests for autographs by young architecture students who freely expressed their excitement at meeting him. "I, personally, was absolutely enthralled by his speech and his excellent delivery, and amazed that my brother actually had 'groupies' just like a rock star."Throughout his life,Lee was totally dedicated to the continuing study and teaching of architecture.Lee is survived by his wife, Laurel; daughter, Kyllikki Inman; son-in-law, Tom Inman; and granddaughter, Katelyn Inman. He is also survived by his brothers, Burton and Hugh "Jerry" Hodgden. Services will be private.