Robert B. Marquis (1927-1995) was born in Stuttgart, Germany, and moved to the U.S. in 1937. He began his architectural studies in 1946 at the University of Southern California School of Architecture, but left three years later without obtaining a degree. He also studied from 1949 to 1950 at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. He married in 1950 and had three children, and three grandchildren. He founded Robert B. Marquis Associates, in San Francisco in 1953 and partnered with Claude Stoller in Marquis & Stoller, Architects from 1956 to 1974.

Claude Stoller was in the Bronx, New York his brother was Ezra Stoller, the architectural photographer. He enrolled at City College of New York for a semester while searching for a school with a strong visual arts curriculum. At the 1938 Bauhaus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that Black Mountain caught his attention, At Black Mountain Stoller focused on art and architecture. He took Josef Albers’s basic courses in design, color and drawing and architectural courses with Lawrence Kocher, Howard Dearstyne, and Lou Bernard Voight. For the class in Small House Design, the students designed small low-cost houses based on a four foot module. Stoller left Black Mountain after the 1942 fall quarter when he was drafted into the United States Army. During World War II he attended army engineering school after which he was sent overseas with the 13th Armored Division in France and Germany. In 1946, Stoller entered Harvard Graduate School of Design where he was accepted with advanced standing despite the fact he had not graduated from Black Mountain. He received his M. Arch in 1949, then studied for a year at the University of Florence in Italy. On his return Stoller worked for architectural firms in the Boston area. In 1955 he moved his family to St. Louis, Missouri, where he taught at Washington University. After two years the Stollers moved to the San Francisco where, in 1956, he formed a partnership with Robert B. Marquis, the brother of Lucian Marquis his friend from Black Mountain. Marquis & Stoller Architects focused on the general practice of architecture and planning including residential, housing, institutional, and governmental projects

Marquis & Stoller contributed significantly to the built environment of the Bay Area particularly in the area of public housing and educational buildings. His projects consist of school music buildings, libraries, labs, and lecture halls; public housing; single-family homes; religious structures; and commercial and government buildings, including community centers, factories, restaurants, and offices. The 1963 design of St. Francis Square in San Francisco in collaboration with landscape architect Lawrence Halprin was among their most notable projects. This award winning moderate-income housing complex was nationally recognized for its sensitive urban design. Marquis was also responsible for the 1985 transformation of a low-income housing complex, also in San Francisco, into the Rosa Parks Apartments for the elderly.

After Stoller’s departure, Marquis was the principal of Marquis Associates until his death in January, 1995. Among his partners in this practice were Cathy Simon, Gita Dev and Hal Brandes. Marquis based his architectural philosophy on the idea that architecture is a humanist, social art, serving the needs of society and users. According to him, the functional and economic goals of a building are equally as important as the structure’s ability to “fulfill the psychological, emotional and spiritual needs of users and the community”.

In addition to his practice, Marquis lectured at several architecture schools during the 1970s and 1980s. He served as Thomas Jefferson Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia in 1980 and, in 1991, was chancellor of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. His focus was on architecture as a social art, returning to this theme in many of his university lectures. An example of this was his "Take-Part Workshops" used to involve the community in the planning of several large projects including Saint Mary’s College High School in Berkeley. His community concerns are also evident in his co-founding of the Urban School in San Francisco.

Sources:

• Goldberger, Paul, "Robert Marquis is dead at 67; noted architect," New York Times, January 6, 1995.

• Marquis, Robert B. CV.

• Michelson, Alan (n.d.) "Architects: Robert Marquis." Pacific Coast Architecture Database.

• Marquis, Robert B. Statement for SFAIA Magazine.

• http://www.blackmountaincollegeproject.org/Biographies/STOLLERclaude/STOLLERclaudeBIO.htm