Jaime Cobas
el proceso de diseño
Exposición organizada por
La Nueva Escuela de Arquitectura
Universidad Politécnica de Puerto Rico

Jaime Cobas, a life of design
By Alexander Kira

It has been almost 30 years since I last saw Jaime Cobas, but we have sporadically kept in touch over the years and every time I have heard from him, or about him from our mutual acquaintances in Puerto Rico, I have always been overwhelmed by the range of projects he has been involved in; from yachts to penthouse apartments, to country villas, to fashion boutiques, accompanying wealthy clients on shopping trips in Paris and designing their party invitations and Christmas cards and decorations. Jaime is a "total designer" who has utilized his talents, skills, and taste in ways that relatively few contemporaries have done. Not to mention, writing occasional architectural articles and criticisms.

Interestingly, he already showed signs of this as an architecture student at Cornell. He was not your typical student who just performed well. He stood out, even then, as someone who always went the extra mile by enhancing his designs and presentations, often appearins at the last minute dressed to match the color of his
drawings! And his designs explored a range of styles and issues from pure functionalism to not yet formulated post-modernism', for example, combining a Michaelangelo parti with a Corbusian façade. On one occasion, I remember a modern minimalist design populated with medieval scale figures!

In his sophomore years, he won the York Prize for a "Cremation Platform for the Dalai Lama", and as a senior he won the Baird Prize for a "MultidenominationaI Chapel in Grand Bahama Island". For several years, he also created posters announcing the upcoming visiting lecture series and on several occasions created some fairly monumental assemblages that no one could miss.

Over the years, I have often cited his career to students as an illustration of what is possible to achieve with an architectural education if one embraces and fully explores all aspects of design, and thinks of it as a ?life of design?, not merely a 9 to 5 job. This, Jaime Cobas has achieved with great distinction!

by Alexander Kira
Professor Emeritus of Architecture
Cornell University

Datos Biográficos by J.C. Rodríguez

Cobas, Crítico y Cronista by Jorge Rigau