Blake, Peter Jost (0929736): Difference between revisions

|birth_place=Berlin, Germany

Peter Jost Blake (born Peter Jost Blach; 1920–2006) was born in Berlin, Germany. In 1933 his parents sent him to England after the Nazi regime came to power; they followed later. In 1938 he began studying at the University of London, and the following year he entered the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture in London. He immigrated to the United States in 1940 and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture program, becoming a protégé of Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. In 1944 he became a naturalized U.S. citizen, changed his surname to Blake, enlisted in the U.S. Army, and trained at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, as an intelligence officer. He served in Europe and was among the first U.S. troops to enter Berlin after Hitler's death. He remained in the army until 1947, returned to New York, and in 1948 was named curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. He earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from the Pratt Institute in 1949. In 1950 he became an associate editor at ''The Architectural Forum'', later rising to editor-in-chief, and left in 1972 for a similar post at ''Architecture Plus''. Alongside editing he practiced architecture, wrote books on the subject, and became known as both a practitioner and a critic of Modernism. He also taught architecture at colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. In 1975 he became chairman of the Boston Architectural Center, then in 1979 joined the Department of Architecture and Planning at The Catholic University of America, serving as department chairman from 1979 to 1986 and remaining until his retirement in 1991. After retiring he moved to Connecticut and continued to write, including regular columns for ''New York'' magazine and ''Interior Design''. He died on 5 December 2006.