Ceremony Dedicates New Plaque Honoring SCI-Arc Founding Director and Faculty
Yesterday, October 10 SCI-Arc held a special 50th anniversary reception and unveiling for a plaque honoring the founding faculty of SCI-Arc, all of whom—save for late founding director Ray Kappe—were in attendance. The plaque, placed at the main entrance of the building serves to acknowledge Ray Kappe, Shelly Kappe, Ahde Lahti, Thom Mayne, Glen Small, Jim Stafford, and Bill Simonian, who broke from the administration at Cal Poly Pomona in September of 1972 to found the experimental architecture ‘college without walls,’ then referred to as the New School, but known today as the Southern California Institute of Architecture.
“While in many ways this is a simple gesture, I think it’s an important one,” expressed SCI-Arc director Hernán Díaz Alonso in his ceremonial remarks. “For everybody who walks into the school from now on this will be a reminder of the people that started the fire; the people who in 1972 walked away from another school and decided it was time to try something else, to try a different way of thinking about architecture, and it has already been 50 years of that.”
Speaking on her late husband and of founding the school, Shelly Kappe shared: “What Ray did with us is what he always did with people: he supported us and let us do the best we could and we all had a great adventure. Congratulations to SCI-Arc, and to all of us—we made it happen together.”