John P. Eberhard, known as far back as the mid-1960s for the radical notion that the architect of the future would be a manager of many disciplines—among them engineering, psychology, politics, economics, ecology, art and technology—died May 2 from complications from COVID-19 and congestive heart failure. A pioneer in systems thinking and evidence-based design, he was 93.
“Architects, as conventionally conceived, are obsolete,” Eberhard said in 1969 (ENR 5/8/69 p. 25). “It is no longer sensible to talk about … architects as though they were the only ones involved in architecture.”