A Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Professor Emeritus Kent Bloomer

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Professor Emeritus Kent Cress Bloomer. Kent passed away at his home on Sunday, October 22, 2023 at the age of 88.

Kent Bloomer (BFA 1959, MFA 1961), sculptor, author, and champion of ornament, taught at Yale for over fifty years and influenced thousands of students. Widely celebrated for his courses on architectural ornament, Bloomer also served as director of undergraduate studies in architecture for Yale College for twenty years and, more recently, taught the required visualization course for Master of Architecture students. Bloomer’s philosophy of ornament—informed by the cosmos and the intricate dance of atoms, made legible at building scale—will surely be influential for generations to come.

Kent studied physics and architecture at MIT before studying sculpture at the Yale School of Art from 1957 to 1961 with Erwin Hauer and Josef Albers. He taught at Carnegie Mellon University until 1966, when Charles Moore, chair of architecture, brought him back to Yale to teach architecture. In 1967, they were co-founders of the Building Project. In 1978, he began teaching “Ornament Theory and Design,” his seminar course on the history and design of architectural ornament, which continued through his retirement from teaching in 2019.

Bloomer founded Kent Bloomer Studio in 1965 when he was awarded the commission to design the bas relief for Pittsburgh’s Rodef Shalom Temple, his first public display transitioning from stand-alone sculptures to architectural ornament. His public ornament is visible throughout the United States, including the roof of the Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library, a window wall in the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the luminaires in New York City’s Central Park, and gothic lights, display cases, gates, and more on the Yale campus. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.

Bloomer is the author of Body, Memory, and Architecture (with Charles Moore), published by the Yale University Press in 1977, and The Nature of Ornament, published by W.W. Norton in 2000. His latest manuscript, written with concert pianist Karin Nagano and completed in 2023, is a comparison of figures of ornament in music with figures of ornament in architecture. A celebration of Kent’s work and legacy is collected in the book Kent Bloomer: Nature of Ornament, edited by Sunil Bald and Gary Huafan He, and published by the Yale University Press in 2020.

Bloomer’s hilarious cartoons of student antics were printed in school publications throughout his student years. He was a gifted musician as well, playing Dixieland jazz drums in bands as a teenager as well as the piano, and later the Hammond B3 organ in his home. He was also an avid life-long sailor, racing in New England waters during his childhood, sailing with his family, and later transitioning from sailboats to his beloved wooden double-ender, Barnacle, on which he cruised for 20 summers with his wife.

Bloomer leaves his wife of 64 years, Leonor “Nona” Golay Bloomer, his son, Mark Clifford Bloomer, Mark’s children, Katelin Qiao Bloomer and Jasper Tian Bloomer, daughter May (Jack) Hoyt, and May’s children, Skylar Cress Bartels and Wiley Wakeman Bartels.

Remembrances of Kent Bloomer can be submitted here to be passed along to Kent’s family. A selection of these will be published in Constructs and online. Gifts in his memory can be made to the Kent Bloomer Scholarship Fund online or via mail to Memorial Gifts, Yale School of Architecture, PO Box 208242, New Haven, CT 06520.