I met Mickey Muennig when he walked in late to one of my first design classes after I returned to teach at OU in '58. It wasn't long before I realized that while short on physical height he was long on design talent. In contrast to his mild manner, he could be uncommonly forceful in thought and action, we became friendly, with Mickey indulging my enthusiasm for Alfred North Whitehead. We also had young children about the same age. Mickey had studied architectural engineering at Georgia Tech and did much of the engineering for his early work, including the landmark Foulke house near Joplin, Missouri where Mickey had lived before college.

I believe we next met in the late sixties at Big Sur, on the California coast where Mickey and his young family seemed influenced by the Hippie movement. I was under the impression that they where sharing quarters with the Gile, an older, very charming man had discovered original Mayan murals at Bonampak.

Mickey's Mother purchased ten acres at the top of Partington Ridge , thus began Mickey's brilliant career as the architectural guru of Big Sur. He first built a circular glassed-in conical shaped structure resting on a low circular stone wall. He lived there temporarily until he built a larger, beautiful house for himself. I remember camping out on Mickey's land with my soon to be wife, Nanine Hilliard, on a wood platform in 1976 and being awakened by the rooting of wild pigs.

Mickey opened an office in a nondescript two story building on highway one in the village of Big Sur. On one wall of his upstairs space he placed a large photo poster of Bruce Goff's Bavinger house. Next to it was an unfinished collage painting of mine that I had given to Mickey. It was about four by four feet in size and included a fine print of Turner's Burial at Sea. In addition to his courses at OU Mickey went to Bartesville to study with BG, who left the chairmanship at OU in 1955. I vaguely remember visiting Mickey in New Orleans where he briefly lived after his studies at OU. Mickey did some brilliant abstract drawings in pencil that were about two by two feet in size. I have one original and prints of others. He employed rubbings to produce leafy textures contrasted to hand drawn crystalline forms of great complexity and interest.

An example of Mickey's work that is accessible to the public is the Hawthorne Gallery on the coastal highway. Unfortunately, the Post Ranch Inn, also located on coastal highway has restricted access to their property. These two works show Mickey's genius. The latter with thirty units now expanding to forty some of which are earth on roof and built into the ocean edge of the site with other units raised on pole supports high enough so that the effect is to frame and enhance the views to the natural surroundings. The colors of these units are dark and obtrusive with dark stained wood and core ten steel predominating.

Mickey, more than any architect I know, can make poetry out of a wood column made from a tapered tree with its bark stripped off and small uplifting brackets positioned at the top of the pole. Mickey makes strong metaphors including aspiration, a human sense of uplift and nature in this type of interior column in several houses in Big Sur. I believe that Mickey has contributed to world architecture and look forward to the publication of a book on his work that currently is in production.