Antonin Raymond 1888 - 1976
Noémi Raymond 1889 - 1980
Antonin Raymond, a naturalized American of Czech birth, and his French-born
wife and fellow artist, Noémi Pernessin, first worked with Wright in 1916. At Taliesin, Raymond produced
drawings for Wright's economical American Model system-built houses, and perspectives of the Imperial
Hotel. When Wright invited the couple to help build the hotel in Tokyo in 1919, they accepted immediately.
But Raymond stayed on the project only a year, leaving to start his own firm in 1920. From Wright, he
and Noémi had learned to worship the Japanese aesthetic of elimination and the fluid relationship between
man and nature. Like Wright, Raymond always oversaw every detail of his designs, and created his own
version of organic architecture principles: a building should be simple, honest, direct, economical and
natural.
