Independent practice

With the beginning of his private practice in March of 1952, Paul Rudolph was eager to purge himself of the Twitchell legacy and move in another direction. His work during this period was expanding into the public realm alongside a steady stream of residential commissions. Guest lectureships and studio critic invitations from Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania became increasingly frequent. Rudolph was tenuously straddling the line between a local culture that nurtured his early development and a national architectural scene that offered him greater opportunity. The break with Twitchell offered Rudolph unbridled independence but also signaled a period of restless experimentation in his work. He started into the prosperous 1950s with a series of projects that attempted to redefine architecture for his generation.