Walter A. Netsch Jr. | Chicago architect, 88

Walter A. Netsch Jr., 88, who designed the University of Illinois-Chicago campus and the Cadet Chapel at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, died of pneumonia Sunday at his Chicago home.

Many of Mr. Netsch's geometrically complex buildings departed from the glass-box orthodoxy of the International Style championed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and other earlier 20th-century figures. Many were vilified when they were built, and some were even demolished.

But many current scholars maintain Mr. Netsch's work represents a break from the style of the 1950s and 1960s and anticipates the unorthodox, computer-generated shapes of such contemporary architects as Frank Gehry. - AP