Roger Ferri is celebrated as one of the most significant architects of his time. Ferri's unique approach to architecture has had a lasting impact on his friends, colleagues and the profession in general. In 1975, when Ferri was 26 years old, his career was launched with the design of the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art in Loretto, Pennsylvania. When he died of AIDS in 1991, he left behind a prolific record as a visionary architect, painter, designer, teacher and author. The retrospective of the artist's work at the Wallach Art Gallery includes national and international architectural projects, both residential and commercial. Ferri's designs comprise interior furnishings as well as exterior forms. More than 75 architectural drawings, renderings and photographs feature diverse projects, such as Pedestrian City, the Blum Residence and the Dai-Ichi Tokyo Bay Hotel. In addition, more than two dozen landscape paintings and figurative works will be shown, many of which reveal his love of all things Italian. Ferri's architectural vision aimed to achieve a symbiosis between the built environment and nature. One of his most innovative designs was for a corporate skyscraper in Manhattan (1976). The proposal included terraces and setbacks featuring ponds, hillocks, meadows, and forested gorges, with waterfalls cascading to the street below. His widely acclaimed ideas led to his being invited to participate in Transformations in Modern Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1979), an exhibition that explored the concept of architecture's move beyond mere functionalism. Ferri's drawings for a Pedestrian City proposed solutions for urban development in a Post-Petroleum Age. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University and the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, 2002 34 pgs. No ISBN
