On December 17th, we lost Albert Szabo, a man whose life was a mix of classroom, treasure hunt, and canvas. As a result of postoperative complications, he died at Mt. Auburn Hospital. Even though he was 78 years old, Albert was fighting Parkinson’s illness and teaching us a lot as he went.
At Harvard, where he had been influential since 1954, Albert was known as the Osgood Hooker Professor of Visual Arts Emeritus. Seeing beauty where others perceived only degradation, he brought life to the debris and ruins, going beyond simply teaching architecture.
Although Albert was born in Brooklyn, his life’s trajectory was everything but typical. His time in the United States Air Force during WWII undoubtedly left an impression on him, shaping his resiliency and outlook on life. He immersed himself in the arts at Brooklyn College after the war and became friends with prominent architects like Marcel Breuer and Serge Chermayeff. Walter Gropius, who helped him earn his Master of Architecture degree at Harvard, was one of many famous people in his academic circle.
His life and work were a patchwork of originality and motivation. Albert was a trailblazer in 1964 when he established Harvard University’s Department of Architectural Sciences, where he introduced students to the visual arts in a unique way. The following is a quote from his coworker John Stilgoe: “Albert Szabo brought the visual and design energy out of students who never knew they had it.”
He left an impression all around the world, including Afghanistan, where he fell head over heels for the local architecture while serving as a Fulbright Lecturer in Kabul. The fruit of this labor of love was the highly acclaimed academic tome “Afghanistan: An Atlas of Indigenous Domestic Architecture” published in 1991.
Public acclaim and success were not the only aspects of Albert’s life. It was also really intimate. Brenda Dyer Szabo was someone he met at the GSD; the two of them went on to have a creative and exploratory life together as architects. Even after he retired, Albert continued to transform everyday items into works of profound art. At the Carpenter Center’s “Inventions + Interventions” exhibition in 2001, he displayed typewriters repurposed as narrative tools housed in shadow boxes.
Albert, as remembered on Legacy Lane, was a visionary who encouraged us to look above surface-level characteristics and see that there is meaning in seemingly insignificant objects, shapes, and pieces of trash.
His wife, daughters Ellen, Rebecca, and Jeannette, son Stephen, and four grandchildren will continue his legacy of insatiable curiosity and a lifelong commitment to learning by seeing the world around him.
Thanks to you, Albert Szabo, we now know how to perceive, wonder, and imagine, in addition to how to look. Without you to hold our hand, how can we continue? Maybe, just how you’d like, by appreciating the creative aspects of our regular experiences. Goodbye, lecturer. The blueprints for the lives you’ve left behind will carry the wisdom you impart.
