Architect Jim Gresham brought a style of modernism to Tucson that celebrated its history.
Many of his buildings are distinctive for their inventive use of brick patterns, from the Arizona Health Sciences Library to the wavy brick-and-glass facade of the Arizona state office building downtown.
Gresham died Thursday. He was 85.
Gresham designed schools, banks and other public buildings across Tucson.
He championed adaptive reuse of historic buildings such as the Steinfeld Mansion, the Manning House, the MacArthur Building and the Temple of Music and Art.
He led drives to save modernist buildings such as Catalina High School and to preserve the region’s oldest mission church — San Xavier del Bac.
“He was an advocate for good architecture, regardless of whether it was contemporary or historic,” said R. Brooks Jeffery, one of the authors of “A Guide to Tucson Architecture.”
“You can’t pin a style on him,” Jeffery said. “He certainly conformed to modernist principles of simplicity but wasn’t afraid to use ornament where necessary, and he recognized that there are time-tested principles from traditional architecture — paradigms that are still appropriate today.”
“Jim was a great architect. He was an enormously talented designer,” said architect Bob Vint, who worked for Gresham-Larson for six years, beginning in 1985. Vint said he is one of many architects in Tucson who consider Gresham their mentor.
Vint said he would often walk by Gresham’s glass-walled office where he would be “playing classical music with a pencil in each hand, rendering.”
The ambidextrous Gresham was also multitalented — a painter and photographer with interests in history, literature and art.
He was a gifted writer, Vint said. In recent months, Gresham worked with Vint, Jeffery and architect Andie Zelnio to compile 41 of his essays and some of his photographs into a book for future publication.
One of those essays, originally published in the Arizona Daily Star, concerned the “Red Campus” of the University of Arizona. It illustrates Gresham’s philosophy of appropriately incorporating contemporary design into historical settings.
The UA’s contemporary buildings are distinguished examples of architecture as art, he wrote, but “raise important questions about the future development of the campus and the continuance of its visual cohesiveness.”
Gresham’s own contributions to the UA campus are modern in design, but always included details created from the red brick that, for him, defined the historical setting.
Gresham came to Tucson in 1956 to work with architect Nicholas Sakellar, attracted by his award-winning modern design for Catalina High School, which Gresham would later play a major role in saving from demolition.
Gresham began teaching at the newly established UA School of Architecture in 1962, leaving in 1971 to devote full time to his practice.
He teamed up with architect Jim Larson in Gresham-Larson Associates in 1981.
Larson, who took design lead on adaptive reuse projects for the Steinfeld Mansion and the Manning House, said Gresham was both encouraging and “a very tough critic. He always gave advice from the perspective of how people move through spaces,” Larson said.
In 2002, Gresham said he considered the just completed Integrated Learning Center at the UA to be his most successful design, because it fit his notion that architecture should be an experience rather than a work of art.
The center sits totally underground, beneath the UA Mall, just north of the Main Library.
The original call for design proposals did not include an opening.
Gresham designed a gymnasium-sized opening on the Mall, with terraced sets of steps leading down to an open courtyard, modeled on step-wells he had seen on travels in India.
“To my mind, the ILC is one of Tucson’s best buildings, just brilliant,” said architect Corky Poster. “It is one of the smartest buildings in Tucson, and he did it with a lot of courage and a lot of intelligence.
“We lost someone important,” Poster said. Gresham was not just a gifted architect but a “wonderful teacher and civic leader.”
Gresham, who was 85, is survived by his wife, Florence, and his daughter, Ann.
