John Lautner

John Edward Lautner (; July 16, 1911 – October 24, 1994) was an American architect. Following an apprenticeship in the mid-1930s with the Taliesin Fellowship led by Frank Lloyd Wright, Lautner opened his own practice in 1938, where he worked for the remainder of his career. Lautner practiced primarily in California, and the majority of his works were residential. Lautner is perhaps best remembered for his contribution to the development of the Googie style, as well as for several Atomic Age houses he designed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which include the Leonard Malin House, Paul Sheats House, and Russ Garcia House.

Biography

Lautner was born in Marquette, Michigan, in 1911, and was of mixed Austrian and Irish descent. His father, John Edward Lautner, who migrated from Germany ca. 1870, was self-educated, but gained a place at the University of Michigan as an adult and then studied philosophy in Göttingen, Leipzig, Geneva and Paris. In 1901, he was appointed as a professor of language and sociology at the recently founded Marquette Northern State Normal School (now Northern Michigan University), where he later became head of the French and German department. In 1907, Lautner married Vida Cathleen Gallagher (née Gallagher), the daughter of Irish immigrants and one of his students at Northern. His mother became an interior designer and painter.