Richard Kelly: Modernism's Lighting Designer

Richard Kelly worked on some of modernism’s most iconic designs, including the Seagram Building in New York, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the Glass House in New Canaan, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, among others. Until recently his name was relegated to the footnotes of architectural history. But as interest in lighting design grows, so does enthusiasm for its history.

Education

Kelly graduated from the Yale Department of Architecture in 1944. During college he had devoted much of his studies to the work of Stanley McCandless, a theater designer. Upon graduation Kelly created a lighting consulting business but found many clients were hesitant to pay for a lighting specialist. He worked to inform architects and the public of the integral nature of good design and lighting.

Career

Kelly pushed the bounds of contemporary technology. If fixtures did not fit a project, he designed his own with manufactures such as Edison Price and Lightolier. And by the 1950s Kelly had defined a vocabulary for modern lighting that included bold punches of light (focal glow), ambient lighting (graded washes), and detailed spots (sharp detail).

But artificial light was not his only medium. Kelly utilized daylighting as a primary source in Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum and the Yale Center for British Art, rejecting the need to house art within a windowless box. He is often heralded as the “father of modern lighting design,” and his contribution to modern architecture cannot be discounted.