When Kevin Lippert graduated in architecture from Princeton in 1981, he and his fellow students were encouraged to study historical texts. But these books were old, fragile, too large and cumbersome, and access to them was limited.
It occurred to him that if they could be reprinted in smaller sizes and made available at a reasonable price, students would be happy to pay for them.
And so he gave his idea a twist. He persuaded the school’s librarians to let him fetch and copy rare books; if students had their own copies, they wouldn’t damage the originals, he argued.
In a pilot project, he first experimented with “Recueil et Parallèle des Edifices de Tout Genre” (“Survey and Comparison of Buildings of All Types”), a book published in 1800 by French architect Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand. He made extensive copies on large sheets of 20 by 26 inches and placed them in wooden boxes for better preservation. At $300 each, they were nice, but not very practical.
To broaden its appeal, he decided that his next book should be smaller, and bound. He chose a classic text: ‘Edifices de Rome Moderne’ (1840), Paul Letarouilly’s three-volume masterpiece, sometimes called the finest book on Renaissance architecture ever published. He found a printer who condensed the work into one volume of an easily manageable 9 by 12 inch and printed 1,000 copies.
Mr. Lippert lured them out of the trunk of his car for $55 each to students. They were immediately sold out.
Thus was born Princeton Architectural Press, of which he was founder and publisher. It eventually went beyond the classic reprint series to produce high quality books on architecture, design and visual culture – and later books on hobbies and crafts, children’s books and note cards.
The publishing house was an early example of the entrepreneurial spirit that inspired the versatile Mr. Lippert, who died on March 29 at his home in Ghent, NY, southeast of Albany. He was 63.
His wife, Rachel Rose Lippert, said the cause was complications from a second battle with brain cancer.
Mr. Lippert made a name for himself as a publisher, but he was more than that. He was a classical pianist who first performed when he was six and composed music for the first time when he was eight. He started out at Princeton as a pre-med student until he became fascinated with the history and philosophy of science and switched majors. Elected Phi Beta Kappa, he received his master’s degree from Princeton’s School of Architecture. He was a computer expert and ran a tech services company, selling hardware and software to design businesses.
In addition, he cooked, cycled, walked, built furniture, gardened and fed on countless cups of espresso. He was also a historian and wrote a book, “War Plan Red” (2015), about secret plans by the United States and Canada to invade each other in the 1920s and 1930s.
“He was a true polymath,” wrote Mark Lamster, who worked for him at Princeton Architectural Press and is now the architecture critic at The Dallas Morning News, in a tribute after his death.
But while Mr. Lippert was bursting with interests, his lasting legacy lay in the field of architecture. The press — which was founded in Princeton, moved to Manhattan, then to the state of Hudson, NY, and then back to Manhattan — had no formal affiliation with Princeton University, although Lippert’s Princeton credentials gave her credibility.
Early on, he met an Eastman Kodak representative and learned about the chemicals used in specialty photography. He then photographed and developed the plates for his books himself, producing high-quality works.
“I want people to think,” he told Archinect, an online architecture forum, in 2004 that “if it’s one of our books, it’s almost certainly interesting, clever, well-edited, and well-crafted.”
His goal was to bring architecture to the widest possible audience and bring new voices to the conversation.
“There was a space between the academic, theory-heavy MIT Press and Rizzoli’s coffee tableism,” wrote Mr. Lamster, adding that Princeton Architectural Press would fill the gap with “the voice of the young practitioner.”
Mr. Lippert was a supporter of emerging architects. In 1989, he published Steven Holl’s groundbreaking architectural manifesto, ‘Anchoring’, and wrote the introduction to the book of the same name. Mr. Holl, in a tribute to Mr. Lippert on his website, called him “a committed intellectual and impresario for architectural culture.”
Mr. Lippert also promoted the work of Tom Kundig, a leading architect in the Pacific Northwest, with whom he published four monographs.
“He has changed my life, and I think he has changed the lives of many people,” Mr. Kundig told Architectural Record. “Look at the list of books he published. He created a whole architectural universe.”
Kevin Christopher Lippert was born on January 20, 1959 in Leeds, England. At the time, his parents, Ernest and Maureen (Ellis) Lippert were studying at the University of Leeds.
While his father continued his graduate studies in analytical chemistry at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, the family moved to Tennessee. They later moved to Ohio, and Kevin grew up mostly in Toledo.
He taught himself to play his grandmother’s piano at age 4, won numerous competitions and continued to play for the rest of his life, including recitals in Princeton, where he conducted the campus radio station WPRB. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1980 and his master’s degree in 1983.
He later taught at Princeton. An expert in digital technologies, he was an early proponent of the use of computer programs and 3D visualization tools.
In 2020, he received an Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Lippert leaves behind his father; his mother, now Maureen Rudzik; two sons, Christopher and Cooper; a daughter, Kate Lippert; and a sister, Kari Lippert. His three previous marriages ended in divorce.
