Robert Gutman

Sociologist, architectural critic
    Robert Gutman of Princeton, an influential sociologist, professor and critic of architecture, died of a heart attack on Nov. 23. He was 81.
   He held faculty positions at Princeton and Rutgers universities for more than five decades and was known as a pioneer in bringing social science into the field of architectural education and practice.
   Although trained as a sociologist, Professor Gutman’s greatest influence and passion was in architecture, the focus of his research since the early 1960s. He explored the relationships among architectural design, architects, buildings, their uses and users, as well as how public policy affects design. He studied and wrote extensively about the impact of the built environment on the people who occupy buildings.
   Professor Gutman was known as a generous scholar, collaborator and mentor.
   Born in New York City and raised in Long Beach, N.Y., he attended Columbia University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1946 and a doctorate in sociology in 1955. After completing his graduate course work, he began teaching sociology at Dartmouth College in 1948.
   He and his wife, whom he married in 1950, moved to Princeton in 1957 when he joined the sociology department at Rutgers University, where he taught until 1996.
   Reflecting the interest in the 1960s about the interactions between architecture and sociology, he received a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation to become a special student of architecture at Princeton and at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London in 1965. He was subsequently recruited in 1969 by Princeton’s School of Architecture to explore this topic as a visiting lecturer with rank of professor, a position he held until his death.
   In the 1970s, Professor Gutman, Architectural School Dean Robert Geddes and Suzanne Keller, a professor of sociology at Princeton, created a pioneering research collaborative, supported by the National Science Foundation, to work on “The Behavioral Assessment of the Built-Environment.”
   At Princeton, he taught “The Sociology of Contemporary Design” and “Theories of Housing and Urbanism.” His research was disseminated through frequent articles in leading architectural and scholarly journals, including Architecture, Progressive Architecture and Architectural Record.
   He also summarized and focused his research in several books, including the collections of essays he edited, “Neighborhood, City and Metropolis” with David Popenoe of Rutgers University and “People and Buildings,” which explored the melding of sociology and architecture in the wake of the failures of modern architecture and planning, especially public housing, and the social upheaval of the late 1960s. The book is considered a classic work in the field. A collection of essays from throughout his academic career is forthcoming from Princeton Architectural Press.
   A symposium in his honor, “Architecture and Public Policy,” was organized by Princeton’s School of Architecture in 2003.
   He also held visiting professorships at Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the Bartlett School of Architecture of the University of London, and the University of Stockholm, and for two terms, he was visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was also an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects.
   He served as chairman of the Environmental Design Research Association, and he was a member of the advisory councils of the architecture schools at Cornell, Harvard, Parsons, Rice, and Washington University in St. Louis.
   His wife, Sonya, died in 1997. He is survived by a son and daughter-in-law John Gutman and Elizabeth Duffy of Lawrence, and their children Lucy and Teddy; daughter and son-in-law Elizabeth Gutman and John Wriedt of Princeton, and their daughter Sylvie.
   A private burial ceremony was held at the Princeton Friends Meeting’s burial ground on Thursday.
   A memorial service will be held 3 p.m. Jan. 19 at Princeton University Chapel.
   In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to the Society of Architectural Historians, 1365 N. Astor St., Chicago, IL 60610 or to Princeton Project 55, 12 Stockton St., Princeton, NJ 08540.
   Arrangements were by Kimble Funeral Home, Princeton.