Paul Katz, president and managing principal of global architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) and a ULI member, died November 20 in Manhattan. He had been undergoing treatment for cancer, with which he had only recently been diagnosed, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center when he died of septic shock. He was 57.
A native of South Africa, Katz designed some of the world’s most prominent skyscrapers and mixed-use developments, including the 101-story Shanghai World Financial Center and the 118-story International Commerce Center in Hong Kong. His signature project is Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills, a massive mixed-use complex on a 27-acre (11 ha) site, which features offices, residences, a conference center, and event spaces, as well as cultural facilities that include an amphitheater, a cinema, and the Mori Arts Center.
“In his 57 years, Paul accomplished so much,” A. Eugene Kohn, KPF chairman and a ULI trustee, wrote on the firm’s website. “With his high standards and penetrating intellect, he contributed to the fundamental value of many of our projects as well as crafting the structure of our global firm. Over the past decades, he trained and mentored many younger architects at KPF, many of whom have themselves become leaders in our field.”
Born in Cape Town, Katz studied architecture at the University of Cape Town and at Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) in Haifa, Israel, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1982. He earned a master’s degree in architecture at Princeton University and joined KPF as a designer in 1984, becoming a principal in 1997. In 2008, Katz was made president and managing principal of the firm, overseeing an international staff of more than 600 design professionals around the world.
Considered by his peers to possess both artistic vision and a fine-tuned sense of the functional details and performance of buildings and infrastructure, Katz left his mark on several iconic landmarks in global capitals. These include Canary Wharf and Earls Court in London, as well as Hudson Yards, a $20 billion mixed-use project being developed on Manhattan’s West Side, which has a master plan developed by Katz and his KPF colleagues.
Katz believed that a contrast of styles, heights, and uses is key to a city’s vitality and success. “Great cities are built out of variety, so where the buildings are all tall or the buildings are all small is not really the answer,” he told CNN in 2011. “The greatest cities have a great diversity in scale.”
Katz was also committed to the idea that vertical and dense development can create sustainable, modern, and efficient communities that reflect the values and lifestyle choices of today’s urban dwellers. He also saw building height and density as solutions in helping Asian cities contend with the rapid influx of rural migrants to urban cores. In an interview with Leaders magazine in 2011, Katz summarized his design philosophy and that of his KPF colleagues:
“We see the tall building as a social and sustainable paradigm in which individual buildings form part of a larger ecosystem of vertical centers linked by horizontal networks of public transportation, rather than objects in isolation. . . . We also believe in incorporating multiple uses into a single tall tower, creating a ‘vertical city’—rather than a horizontal city—and relying on elevators instead of cars; this is all part of our sustainable agenda.”
Katz taught at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and the Yale School of Architecture and lectured widely at industry conferences and events. He and Kohn cowrote the textbook Building Type Basics for Office Buildings, published by Wiley in 2002.
Katz is survived by his wife, Ziva Freiman, of Scarsdale, New York; a son, Jonathan; a daughter, Hannah; parents Walter and Esther Katz; and a brother, Shmuel. His funeral was held at Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the KPF Foundation to support scholarship and fellowships for the study of architecture and urbanism.
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