Architects Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, who worked independently in New York in a partnership lasting from from 1941 through 1976, designed some of America´s most famous buildings. Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz designed the CIA Headquarters at Langley, the U.S. consulate in Rio de Janeiro, the U.S. Embassy in Havana, the U.S. Steel Building in Pittsburgh, the Phoenix Mutual Headquarters in Hartford, the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois, the Time & Life Building in New York, the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York, the Temple Beth Zion in Buffalo, the Brandeis University campus, and the United Nations Headquarters (with Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Sir Howard Robertson and others). Their buildings are clear, modernist and functional, yet with plenty of daring volumes and considered symbolism. The United Nations assembly hall, for instance, is a dramatic, large space illustrating the importance of the location, nearly like out of a sixties science fiction movie. The architecture duo, unlike some of the other architects they collaborated with, is hardly known. Yet their buildings have become modern landmarks - not so much because of their politically important function, but because of their iconic design.
