Bill Lam
Bill Lam (1924-2012) was born in Honolulu Hawaii and went to school at Punahou Academy. He moved to Cambridge, MA in 1941 to attend MIT. After Pearl Harbor was bombed, it took him several days to find out that his family was safe. He enlisted in the Army Army Air Corps and served as a B-25 co-pilot for three years and participated in 37 bombing missions in Southeast Asia.
After his service, Lam returned to MIT and completed a degree in architecture in 1949. He was influenced by Alvar Aalto—who had designed MIT’s Baker House in 1946 and taught at MIT while Bill was a student. Lam, would also go back to teach at MIT, along with Harvard, and Yale.
He established his lamp business, Lam Workshop, in the late 1940s in Massachusetts. His lamps and table were selected for Case Study Houses and MoMA’s Good Design exhibitions. Advertisements for the company were published in Arts & Architecture magazine, marking his designs as Merit Specified for the the Case Study Program. He sold Lam Workshop to a subsidiary of Philips lighting in 1959. However, his career in lighting and architecture continued.
Considered a Pioneer in architectural lighting, Bill wrote two influential books– Perception and Lighting as Formgivers for Architecture (1977) and Sunlighting as Formgiver for Architecture (1986). They have become legendary reference books in the architectural and lighting design professions.
Notable Lighting Projects:
Washington DC Metro, Harry Weese
San Diego Convention Center, Erikson
Hyatt Recency Hotel, San Francisco, John Portman
