Serge Chermayeff, 95, architect, educator

Chermayeff, born in the Caucasus, received his education in England, where he did most of his early work. He was associated with a series of architectural firms and started the academic side of his career on the faculty of the European Mediterranean Academy in Cavaliere, France, in the early 1930s.

He came to the United States in 1939 and was in private practice while teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute and Brooklyn College, where he was chairman of the department of design from 1942 to 1946. He was later on the faculty of the Illinois Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His association with Harvard started in 1953, as head of the department of architecture, a position he held for nine years. He filled the same post at Yale from 1962 until his retirement in 1970.

Among his early work noted by his peers was the seaside Bexhill Pavilion in England, which was restored last year. In California, he designed the Clarence Mayhew House in Oakland and the elegant, wood-framed Horn house in Marin County.

He was the author, with C. Alexander, of Community and Privacy: Toward a New Architecture of Humanism (1963) and, with Alexander Tzonis, of Shape of Community: Realization of Human Potential (1971).

He was a co-founder of the American Society of Planners and Architects. At the recommendation of Walter Gropius, he also served as president of the Chicago Institute of Design.

Chermayeff is survived by his wife, Barbara Mailand May Chermayeff; two sons, Peter, of Cambridge, Mass., and Ivan, of Manhattan; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.