Ray Kappe is an internationally recognized archiect, urban planner, and educater. His much awarded and published work is considered to be an extension of the early Southern California master architects: Wright, Schindler, Neutra, and Harwell Hamilton Harris. After graduation from the University of California, Berkeley in 1951, Kappe worked for the San Francisco firm of Anshen+Allen and Los Angeles-based architect Carl Maston before opening his own practice in Southern California. Kappe has completed some 100 single-family houses, but his tour de force is his own house in Pacific Palisades, built in 1965-67, and designated a Cultural Heritage Monument by the City of Los Angeles in 1996. In 1972, Kappe left the California Polytechnic State University, Pomona, where he had served as professor and Founding Chairman of the Department of Architecture, to establish the Southern California Institute of Architecture SCI-ARC. Kappe has received innumerable design, education and life achievement awards including the Richard Neutra International Medal for Design Excellence, the California Council AIA Bernard Maybeck Award for Design, and the Topaz Medal, the highest award in architectural education.