Ernest J. Kump
Kump's most notable projects include Fresno City Hall (1940), the U.S. embassy in Seoul, Korea (1957), and Foothill College in Los Altos, California.
Shortly after his brother Peter was born, Kump's father abandoned the family to set up an architecture practice in Fresno, leaving his mother to raise them alone.
Saffell (1858–1936) and attended Kern County Union High School where he studied under noted architectural educator Clarence Cullimore FAIA (1885–1963).
He fully embraced the modernist movement and Kump Sr., having been classically trained, soon discovered the conflict between their design ideals, referring to his son's work as "chicken coop architecture."
They left Fresno for the Bay Area during World War II to provide the military with their architectural knowledge and skills, Franklin to the Corps of Engineers and Kump to the Navy.
During that time Kump worked with structural engineer Mark Falk where he applied his ideas on modular and prefabricated construction to produce the Naval Optical and Ordnance Building at Hunters Point, one of the world's first transparent multi-story buildings.Following World War II, Franklin, Kump & Falk established a practice in San Francisco.
Kump was a panelist on the very significant Planning Man's Physical Environment, a three-day symposium held at Princeton University in 1947 as part of the school's bicentennial celebration along with Alvar Aalto, Serge Chermayeff, Sigfried Giedion, Walter Gropius, Philip Johnson, George Fred Keck, Richard Neutra, Konrad Wachsmann, Frank Lloyd Wright, William Wurster and other eminent practitioners and scholars.
Other designs of recognition include the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, Korea and the Pacific Lumber Company Headquarters in San Francisco.Kump was part of the Master Planning Committee at the University of California, Santa Cruz, starting in 1961 with Theodore Bernardi, Robert Anshen, John Carl Warnecke and Thomas Church.
[9] Kump made several contributions to the profession by serving on President Ronald Reagan's Task Force for Arts and Humanities and teaching at many universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He undertook modernisation works to install central heating, shore up it walls, glaze some of the open arcading and improve the traffic circulation and took a great interest in its medieval construction and intricate floorplan.
After retiring from active practice in the United States, Kump lived abroad and maintained a London office with Takeda from which he continued working as an international architectural consultant.
