Examining this antique furniture, he noticed right away that the structure was quite primitive. It appeared similar to boat construction, and no more complex. So the dining set budget was applied to a basic table saw and some pine lumber, stain and hardware. Using these, along with the boat-building tools he already had, he proceeded to design and build an apartment full of furniture. The end result was more North-European-Medieval than Spanish, but he had created exactly what he wanted, and it actually couldn’t have been bought at any price.
He was surprised when several friends said he should do this for a living. He had been raised to believe that one couldn’t make money with their hands; that wealth was created by buying and selling, hiring and firing, and turning a profit. In high school, he had taken up drafting and had been curious about the profession of architecture. He had even tried a night course at Columbia but had observed it to be a world of creating blueprints for buildings that looked like other buildings. In the passion of youth, most of his attention was on boat hulls and ski lifts. He didn’t notice that some buildings were unique and aesthetic. Since he didn’t need houses, he didn’t really see them.
Study of Architecture and European Apprenticeship
Then one evening, he found himself dragged (kicking and screaming) into a bookstore (as opposed to his preference of hanging out at West Village bars). Being a science fiction reader, he perused that section of the store and found an intriguing book called Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. He read the first twenty pages there in the aisle, read his way up to the counter and out of the store, and spent the next two days playing hooky on sales calls while sitting in the library reading that book. Then, having developed an understanding of “fair exchange” and becoming a fan of Ayn Rand, he got a copy of The Fountainhead, by the same author, and thus discovered what architecture was really about!
Armed with exuberant fascination for his new fictional icon, Howard Rourke, he went back to Columbia to again take night courses. He was wisely counseled to enroll in a course in Architectural Perspective, so as to get the feel for form and structure. The curriculum dealt with creating a true visual three dimensional copy of a building, graphically constructed from the plans. He found he had an instantaneous grasp of the methods, and the instructor took him aside and created a special advanced course for him. That gave him the confidence to continue on a multi-year study program even though he was starting out “late” in life. The following semester, he entered the basic design program.
The first project was to design a pedestrian resting place for the pending 1964 World’s Fair. Peter drew a plan and elevations for a curved, three-sided bench, with a cylindrical segment roof mounted on a pedestal. He asked the instructor if he should also draw a perspective rendering of it, and the instructor said, “If you can draw a perspective of that, you’re a better man than I am!” An hour later, there it was, and the instructor was amazed.
Despite the initial encouragement he got in that class, his goal of designing uniquely for any situation was not always validated. The next semester, when he drew a three-hundred-sixty-degree, circular, curved roof design for a dune-top beach house, that instructor told him, “That’s not a beach house motif. It’s something for a hockey stadium!” (Recent design history has proven him wrong, of course.)
Fast approaching his thirtieth birthday, he felt that life was passing him by. He hated being a sales rep, calling on accounts. In addition to Ayn Rand’s works, he had been intrigued by The Razors Edge by W. Somerset Maugham. Like Larry (and Rourke), he “chucked it all” and fled to Europe, his dreamland, on a one-way plane ticket. Well, even in 1964, five hundred dollars didn’t last very long, but he managed to land a drafting position with a Berlin architectural firm.
His first project was to draft the specifications for a twelve-story apartment building. It had an interesting shape in plan view but ended off in a very flat and boring top with no breaks in any of the twelve-story walls. Peter asked if he could work to improve on this, and the architect said, “Sure! As an American and a New Yorker, you are more aware of tall buildings then we are.” So Peter turned the upper levels into abstract duplexes, and his employer was very pleased by the result.
As summer approached, Peter got word that his folks were going to be on a Mediterranean cruise, and could he possibly meet them in Rome? During his search for work, he had heard of a noted landscape architect in Florence who paid well for American assistants (a whole dollar an hour). So Peter gave notice, got a great work reference, and went to Italy.
The Italian office designed metropolitan boulevard landscapes, corporate campuses, and estates for the truly wealthy. When the architect discovered Peter had model building experience, he asked him to try to create an accurate three-dimensional model of a very complicated design which was difficult to depict on paper and set him up in a studio with all possible forms of modeling materials. Peter was experimenting with Plaster-of-Paris and working with a watery mix which was too thin to shape, when he remembered sand castle dribbling from childhood. He found he could rough out all sorts of curved design elements with this method. When the shapes first hardened, they could be cut and tooled into fine detail, because the consistency was softer than that of a normal plaster mix. From this, the architect developed a new form of presentation for designs. He no longer used labor-intensive renderings. Instead, he would ship the model to the client and then fly out himself after it arrived.
Peter's Italian employer was actually quite devastated when Peter announced he was returning to America and even offered him a substantial raise! But Peter felt he had left a lot of loose ends in America when he went abroad so suddenly. He wanted to return briefly to clear things up and then to earn a nest-egg for going back to Europe. He had found that each country he visited had its own unique approach to putting aesthetics into architecture. His plan was to continue working his way through various countries as a draftsman so as to become acquainted with more of these approaches to architecture. This was, however, not to be.
Working in architectural offices back in New York City was a disappointment. The goal there was to bang out the work, using drawing criteria that seemed downright sloppy compared to the precision drafting Peter had done in Germany. Input by staff into any creative design was allowed only on the basis of seniority or credentials, not ability.
Peter started and left two positions in a short month and found himself back at square one, with some tools and pine lumber, building the interior of his apartment. The one difference was that, this time, the unit itself needed extensive renovations. Fortunately, there was a real estate office downstairs, and the staff there referred Peter to new tenants needing interior renovations and build-ins. Presto, he was in the construction and furniture business!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
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