Lawrence P Kenny [RP 2010]

First name:  Lawrence ; 
Middle name:  P ; 
Last name:  Kenny ;

Member: Resident patron member ; 
Begin: 2010 ;
End:  n/a ;

Biography:

I was raised in and around New York City. From childhood I was drawn to art and architecture. I decided to go into architecture and studied the subject with that intention, eventually discovering the program at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago developed by Mies van der Rohe. There I received Bachelor and Masters degrees. In graduate school I studied with the architect Myron Goldsmith and the structural engineer Fazlur Khan. I received scholarships from The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, The American Iron and Steel Institute and an anonymous grant. After graduation I spent a year at Skidmore Owings and Merrill working with Goldsmith on a city plan for Columbus, Indiana. The structure developed for my Masters thesis was used by SOM as the basis for two projects — a submission (unbuilt) for the US Pavilion at the Osaka World’s Fair (1967) and the Central Facilities Building for Baxter Laboratories in Deerfield Illinois (1975).

In 1970 architect John Vinci and I formed the office of Vinci/Kenny. Our practice included many art installations and remodelings for museums, galleries and collectors, among them The Art Institute of Chicago, The Renaissance Society at the U of C. and the Smart Museum. We worked on many preservation and adaptive reuse projects such as H. H. Richardson’s Glessner House, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House. We were the architects for the reconstruction of the Louis Sullivan Stock Exchange Room at the Art Institute of Chicago. Our residential work included the Freeark House in Riverside Illinois and many remodelings and interiors. In 1974 I spent a year in New York working as an artist. I returned to Chicago for three years before moving permanently to New York in 1977. There I continued to practice architecture, working at art when I could.

In New York I worked briefly as a project architect at Marcel Breuer Associates. From 1980 I practiced independently or in collaboration with other architects on residential and institutional projects including the renovation of the Beaumont and Newhouse Theaters at Lincoln Center and a museum store for the Yale University Art Gallery. I worked on art exhibition designs for the Neue Galerie New York, two with John Vinci: the inaugural exhibition (2001) and the Dagobert Peche exhibition (2002).  And two on my own: Viennese Silver, Modern Design 1780-1918 (2003) and Comic Grotesque: Wit and mockery in German art 1870 to 1940 (2004). In 2005 I scaled back my architectural practice and in 2008 closed it. Art became my sole occupation.

https://www.lkarc.com/