“The devil is in the details,” it’s sometimes said, but the influential Central Florida architect Nils Schweizer preferred the earlier version — that God is in the details — as his family members, colleagues and friends recalled at a recent Winter Park program about Schweizer and his ties to his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright.
Presented by the Friends of Casa Feliz and Winter Park’s Historic Preservation Board, the program at Winter Park City Hall — itself a Mid-Century building that shows Schweizer’s influence — included an a talk by Wright expert Tim Totten and an interview with Schweizer’s widow, Beverly Schweizer Gurtis, who met the architect when he came to Lakeland as Wright’s representative during the construction of Florida Southern College.
In 1955, the couple were the first to be married in the college’s Wright-designed Danforth Chapel. It accommodated exactly 100 people — as the bride knew well because she made the cushions for the pews herself. From his work with Wright, the groom would go on to a career of deep influence in Central Florida.
An architect’s journey
During Schweizer’s service in World War II, he was one of the U.S. soldiers who entered the Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945, Gurtis recalled. He talked with her about it only once, but the condition of the victims he saw there affected him greatly.
His path to architecture began after the war, when he applied to Wright’s school at Taliesen East near Spring Green, Wis., in early 1946. At Taliesen, Schweizer learned Wright’s philosophy of organic architecture — the idea that a building should reflect its site and surroundings and be in harmony with them.
So for Schweizer, the idea of “God in the details” didn’t mean details about style, architect Kevin Schweizer has written about his father. Instead, the details of a building “orchestrate the rhythm, patterns, and order of material and structure so that we may discover the organic order that connects us to our creator and our community of family, friends, and neighbors.”
In 1958, Schweizer began an architectural practice in Winter Park above Wren’s Men’s store on Park Avenue. In 1960 he and his brothers Mark and Hans formed Schweizer Associates and built an office on Comstock Avenue — a building that incorporated many of the architectural elements now known as Mid-Century Modern, Kevin Schweitzer notes, such as horizontal masses of concrete block connecting with and bypassing one another, horizontal overhangs, and wide window walls from floor to ceiling to blur the line between interior and exterior (see CentralFloridaModern.com).
The Comstock building grew with Schweizer Associates into Environmental Design Group, where many Orlando-area architects began their careers. The firm’s work included the Chamber of Commerce building in Orlando and The Springs in Longwood. In 1979, EDG scaled down and opened an office in downtown Orlando as Schweizer Incorporated, focusing on large-scale projects including the 1980s expansion of the Orlando Public Library, Orlando International Airport, Calvary Assembly Church, and the renovation of St. Luke’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Orlando.
At his death at age 62 in 1988, Nils Schweizer had also been involved in the master planning of more than 100 churches. “Build to heal” was another of his principles, his son Kevin remembers. “Build with the sun to create spaces into which light penetrates and is shared and reflected and absorbed until there is only the silence of light to mend our souls as we sleep.”
Rare Wright tour Oct. 27
An Oct. 27 fundraiser in Tallahassee brings a rare opportunity to tour the Lewis Spring House, designed by Wright, and to get an insider’s look into its history. The 1:30 to 5 p.m. program features a talk by Totten, joined by Gurtis and Kevin Schweizer, as well as Byrd Lewis Washburn, daughter of the original owners. The cost is $40, with proceeds supporting the preservation of the building. Details: PreserveSpringHouse.org. To purchase tickets, click on “Afternoon with Wright.”
Joy Wallace Dickinson can be reached at jwdickinson@earthlink.net, FindingJoyinFlorida.com, or by good old-fashioned letter at the Sentinel, 633 N. Orange Ave., Orlando, FL 32801.