, 1954 Flatow was born in
Port Arthur, Texas, the son of Tobias and Alice Jones Flatow, and grew up in an orphanage (Masonic Home and School of Texas) after his father died when he was 5. During
World War II he was a first lieutenant in the Army and worked for the
Army Corps of Engineers designing military installations. In 1945, he moved to the secret city of
Los Alamos, where, promoted to Captain, he served as Architectural Superintendent of Construction for the
Los Alamos Laboratory, reporting to
Robert Oppenheimer. joined the firm, becoming a partner in 1952. One of the firm's first big commissions was the
Simms Building, which was Albuquerque's first
International style high-rise and helped usher the city into the era of modern architecture. The building attracted local and national attention, with
Progressive Architecture magazine reporting that "few office buildings that we have seen are more rational, sensibly schemed structurally and mechanically, or more colorful." In recognition of its "exceptional significance", it was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places only 42 years after its completion. Another influential commission was the
University of New Mexico College of Education, a complex of six buildings completed in 1963 which "preserved the essence of the campus’s
Pueblo Revival style while pushing its boundaries, especially by abstracting and incorporating an eclectic mix of Pueblo and regional influences." According to architectural critic
Bainbridge Bunting, "...while it respects and draws inspiration from the traditional architecture of the region, it also accepts modern technology without apologies. And in drawing from both the old and the new, the design avoids crippling compromise and rises, instead, to a new and creative plane which is uniquely appropriate to the particular problems at hand." The complex went on to win a number of awards. Flatow retired from architecture in 1990 and died in 2003 at the age of 87. His widow, Annie Stein Flatow, died in 2014 at the age of 93. ==Firm==