Professor Paul Rothstein

I was one of the privileged student at ASU to go to School of Design and had a marvelous opportunity of being in the same era of Professor Paul Rothstein. I had taken couple of his classes and had an opportunity to be in seminars on some of the design issues he was working on. His personality was magnetic and sharp. Very few people have that beaming glow of intelligence in their eyes and Paul was one of them. He literally forced people to think critically and objectively about design issues, rather than having that vague and inexplicable quality. Everyone just nodded in sheer agreement with his point of view because it just made pure logic. He divided the design issues in plain smaller solvable sections and dealt with each one and like a straightforward scientific problem. No abstraction involved and ignored. His approach to design theory was neat and presented factually. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not with us anymore.