Harwell Hamilton Harris

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Harwell Hamilton Harris (1903, Redlands, California - 1990, Raleigh, North Carolina) was an American architect. Harris created a very personal Southern California architectural style that carefully modulated interior and exterior space. He began his studies at Pomona College but dropped out to study sculpture at the Otis Art Institute, now Otis College of Art and Design. In 1928, he began working with architect Richard Neutra with whom he was associated until 1932.

Adopting Neutra's modernist sensiblity, Harris merged the vernacular of California with a sensitivity to site and materials characteristic of the American Arts & Crafts movement. In his residential work of the 1930s and 1940s, primarily in California, Harris created a tension and a continuum between exterior and interior with continuous rooflines. Learning from Frank Lloyd Wright, he designed interior spaces that are often based on the cruciform plan. His work is characterized by a careful use of materials and clean, fluid spaces.

From 1952 until 1955, Harris served as the Dean for the School of Architecture of the University of Texas. The group of modernist architects he attracted to the faculty there came to be known as The Texas Rangers. In 1955, he left the university and established a private practice in Dallas, which he maintained until 1962 when he moved to Raleigh, North Carolina where he re-established his practice and began teaching at North Carolina State University. He retired from teaching in 1973 but continued to practice architecture from his home studio in Raleigh until shortly before his death there on November 18, 1990.

Harris's archival records are held by the Alexander Architectural Archive of The University of Texas at Austin. [1]