Richard Meier is one of the most important contemporary architects. He took his diploma in architecture from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York state, in 1957. Richard Meier then spent several years in New York, working in distinguished architecture practices such as Marcel Breuer and Associates and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In 1963 Richard Meier opened his own architecture practice. Richard Meier was also a professor of design at Cooper Union in Manhattan. This was followed by appointments to teach architecture and design at Syracuse and the Ivy League universities Princeton, Yale, and Harvard. Richard Meier's earliest buildings were private houses and housing in the International Modern style in the 1960s. In 1969 Richard Meier was one of the "New York Five", to whom an exhibition was devoted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: the others were Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, and John Hejduk. Richard Meier's buildings have attracted attention worldwide and he has worked on an international scale: the Athenaeum in New Harmony, Indiana (1975-1979); the Bronx Development Center (1977), followed by the Museum for Kunsthandwerk in Frankfurt am Main (1979-1984) and the Renault company headquarters (1981) in Boulogne-Billancourt. In 1986 Richard Meier designed the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona and, in 1992, he was commissioned to design the new Getty Center in Los Angeles. Other Richard Meier museums abroad include the Burda Museum in Baden-Baden (2004) and the Arp Museum in Rolandseck near Remagen, followed by more museums in 2006. Richard Meier's style of architecture is utterly distinctive, notable for clarity of structure and best characterized by concepts such as white, light, and space. Configuring the play of light is of particular importance to Richard Meier, who describes light as his "favourite and most versatile building material". As a designer Richard Meier is known for furniture and utilitarian objects, including a 1982 armchair for the library of the Guggenheim Museum in New York as well as other furniture for Knoll International. In 1983 Richard Meier designed the "Tea & Coffee Piazza" for Alessi, a silver service limited to an edition of 99.