Richard T. Foster

Richard T. Foster, an architect who collaborated with Philip Johnson in reshaping the New York University campus in the 1970s, died Sept. 13 in Danbury, Conn. He was 83 and lived in Wilton, Conn., in a revolving house of his own design.

A round house was no departure for Mr. Foster, whose buildings with Johnson were full of curves at a time when many architects thought in right angles. There were concave columns at NYU, convex columns at Yale, gentle arcs at the Kreeger Museum in Washington and a 190-foot circle for the New York State Pavilion at the 1964-65 World ' s Fair.

In 1982, Dr. John Brademas, then the president of NYU, called Mr. Foster " a man who more than any other has changed the face of New York University in recent years, " as he presented the architect with a citation. Mr. Foster ' s work for the university included the 1977 renovation of the Institute of Fine Arts, in the former James B. Duke mansion at Fifth Avenue and 78th Street.

Brademas said three buildings around Washington Square the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library (1972), Tisch Hall (1972) and the Hagop Kevorkian Center (1973) had " contributed greatly to defining the public identity of New York University as an institution that is part of the modern city, yet at home with the older atmosphere of the square. "

Not everyone agreed. Many Greenwich Villagers deplored the Bobst Library, a ruddy sandstone box around a 150-foot atrium.

" There is a kind of arrogance to the building ' s huge form towering over Washington Square, " said Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic of The New York Times, in a 1973 appraisal. Acknowledging that the atrium was spectacular, Goldberger said that Johnson and Mr. Foster " seemed unwilling to let a powerful space alone they tried to make it pretty. "

Their work was more austere on Yale ' s Science Hill, where they designed five structures, most notably the 14-story Kline Biology Tower of 1965, their first high-rise, framed in heavy brick-clad cylinders.

They also designed the David Lloyd Kreeger house on Foxhall Road in Washington (1968), now the Kreeger Museum. Their fanciful World ' s Fair pavilion the Tent of Tomorrow and three mushroomlike towers still stands like a Jet Age ruin near the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

" What you see from the 1960s is very much the influence of the two of them together, " said Hilary Lewis, author of the opening essay in the new monograph " The Architecture of Philip Johnson " (Bulfinch Press).

Born in Pittsburgh, Mr. Foster served in the Army Air Forces in World War II. He was Johnson ' s prize student in the late 1940s, wrote Franz Schulze in " Philip Johnson: Life and Work " (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), and was hired by Johnson after graduating from Pratt Institute in 1950. He remained with Johnson until 1962 and was coaxed back to collaborate on the NYU program.

Mr. Foster is survived by his wife, Eleanor; sons, Robert, of Newtown, Conn., Craig, of Ridgefield, Conn., and Bradley, of Norwalk, Conn.; five grandchildren; and brother, Ralph, of Grove City, Pa.