Raymond's initial work with American architects Cass Gilbert and Frank Lloyd Wright gave him an insight into the use of concrete for texture and structure that he would refine throughout his six-decade career.

Raymond applied these principles to a wide range of residential, commercial, religious, and institutional projects in Japan, America, India, and the Philippines.

[2] Raymond was born on 10 May 1888, in Kladno, Central Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) to Alois Reimann, a Jew of German descent, and his wife Růžena, a Catholic.

There, he began a three-year employment with Cass Gilbert, working on a number of projects including external architectural details for the Woolworth Building[3] and the Austin, Nichols and Company Warehouse in Brooklyn.

His desire to free himself from Wright's influence led him to explore spatial relationships between living, working and dining areas and how spaces could be closed off with folding screens.

He also undertook work for the Rising Sun Petroleum Company, designing 17 earthquake-proof and fireproof employee houses, the general office building, the manager's residence and two prototype service stations, one in steel and the other in concrete.

Based upon Le Corbusier's unbuilt residential scheme for Mr. Errazuris in Chile, he designed a summer house for himself in Karuizawa, Nagano.

[23] In 1937 in Tokyo, Antonin, Noémi and a number of Japanese architects, including Junzō Yoshimura, signed Articles of Association forming a new firm, Reymondo Kenchiku Sekkei Jimushō.

[25] Initially, Nakashima, Francois Sammer (a Czech architect who had worked for Le Corbusier in Russia), and Chandulal (a devotee who had trained as an engineer), built a full-scale model of the dormitory in order to test the feasibility of the design, and then used it as a laboratory to further refine the construction methods.

[26] Raymond sought to mitigate the effects of the Pondicherry climate and oriented the Golconde dormitory (as it became known), so that its main facades faced north and south to make use of the prevailing breeze.

A combination of moveable louvres on the exterior skin and woven teak sliding doors permitted ventilation without compromising on privacy.

He and his wife's goal was to "create a physical and intellectual environment that mirrored and supported their approach to modern design, one that synthesized International Style developments with lessons learned from Japan's craft tradition".

[28] They hoped that the lifestyle and design ethos that they would create, would be simpler and more in tune with nature, similar in set up to Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship.

The Raymonds modified the house to create a more open plan feel, separated by Japanese fusuma partitions and shōji screens.

[31] In May 1943, the Raymonds vouched for George Nakashima and his family, releasing them from a Japanese internment camp in Idaho, so that they could come and live at the New Hope farm.

Their single story Great River Station on the Long Island Rail Road expressed Raymond's fondness for inexpensive, simple materials.

[36] In the St. Joseph the Worker Chapel, Victorias, in the Philippines, Raymond worked with liturgical artist Ade Bethune, to produce mosaic murals and a lacquerware tabernacle inside the reinforced concrete church.

The practice were also responsible for a number of parks and recreation buildings across the United States in the late 1940s, built largely to commemorate victory in the war.

[37] Its choice was treated with great resentment by the Japanese who felt that favouritism was shown by the Occupation authorities in allowing an American company to utilise a prominent site that would have served better as a park.

[38] Taking influence from Le Corbusier, Raymond responded to this criticism by masterplanning the site by using a Ville Radieuse inspired layout with the building set in gardens with sculptures by the Japanese American sculptor, Isamu Noguchi.

[37] It is considered the first large building in which Raymond managed to use his principles of simplicity, economy of materials, elegance and lightness learned from his residential works.

Raymond cited the design of the Hiroshima Peace Museum by Kenzo Tange as being an external imitation of the Reader's Digest Building.

The office served as a proving ground for the latest American building innovations including veneered plywood and suspended metal ductwork for forced air heating.

Taking influence from Le Corbusier's modulor, Raymond used the traditional Japanese module of the ken (based upon the size of tatami mats) as a unit of measure to set out the building's structure.

[41] Raymond sought to use the design and construction of the office as a platform to inform prototype dwellings for the post war reconstruction of Japan.

Raymond achieved these aims by using a series of 12 centimetres (4.7 in) thick, reinforced concrete ribs connected together like an accordion and spanning 60 metres (200 ft).

[43] Born in 1889 in Cannes to Swiss-French parents, Noémi moved to New York in 1900, and later studied Fine Art and Philosophy at Columbia Teachers College.

[47] Ignored by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Jr and Philip Johnson in their curatorial celebration of the International Style in 1932, and despite the homecoming exhibition of his work staged in the Rockefeller Center in 1939 and the AIA New York Chapter Medal of Honor that was awarded to him 17 years later in 1956, one has the feeling that Raymond's achievements were always somehow grudgingly received by his compatriots.

This was further explored on the Tetsuma Akaboshi and the Morinosuke Kawasaki houses, where the concrete walls of the luxurious interiors were imprinted with cypress textures.

Predating Le Corbusier's work in Chandigarh, the Golconde dormitory used a monolithic concrete structure with deep overhangs and louvres to adapt to specific climatic conditions.