Paul Rudolph, the US’s greatest brutalist, had a career in four overlapping acts. First, starting in the 1950s, he designed private houses, delightful Florida getaways where modernist glassiness was tempered by screens and shutters. In the next decade he designed monumental concrete fortresses, majestic and sometimes monstrous, for universities, corporations and gigantic urban renewal programmes. Then came inward and intricate homes in Manhattan such as the Hirsch house, eventually owned by the fashion designer Halston, where the likes of Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli and Bianca Jagger would go to Studio 54 afterparties, later again bought by Tom Ford for $18m (£13.55m). In the 80s he returned to building at scale, with big-budget commissions for skyscrapers and malls in Singapore, Hong Kong and Jakarta.
