Gunnar Birkerts

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Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (Missouri) (1992–1994)
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (1973)
Latvian National Library (2014)

Gunnar Gunivaldis Birkerts , Latvian Gunārs Birkerts (born January 17, 1925 in Riga , † August 15, 2017 in Needham (Massachusetts) , United States). was an American architect of Latvian origin.

Life

Gunnar Birkerts was the son of literary scholar and folklorist Pēteris Birkerts (1881–1956) and the teacher Merija Shop Birkerts (Mērija Saule-Sleine, 1895–1982). He grew up in Latvia and fled the advancing Red Army to the west at the end of World War II . After studying architecture and engineering at the Technical University of Stuttgart , he graduated here in 1949 as a graduate engineer .

In December 1949 he emigrated to the United States. Here he worked first for the Perkins and Will office , then for Eero Saarinen and Minoru Yamasaki , before opening his own architectural office Gunnar Birkerts & Associates in a suburb of Detroit . From 1959 to 1990 he taught at the University of Michigan .

Birkerts designed 300 buildings, including several award-winning public buildings, which are characterized by “expressiveness and symbolic character.” For his projects, he received several national awards from the American Institute of Architects (1962, 1970, 1973). The Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan keeps his collection of drafts up to 2002 .

Birkerts lived in Wellesley (Massachusetts) until his death . Sven Birkerts is his son.

Works (selection)

honors and awards

Fonts

  • Subterranean Urban Systems . Industrial Development Division-Institute of Science and Technology, University of Michigan 1974
  • Process and Expression in Architectural Form . University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK 1994 ISBN 0-8061-2642-6

literature

  • Sven Birkerts, Martin Schwartz: Gunnar Birkerts - Metaphoric Modernist. Menges, Stuttgart, 2009, ISBN 978-3-936681-26-0 , especially pp. 1–27
  • Kay Kaiser: The Architecture of Gunnar Birkerts. American Institute of Architects Press, Washington DC, 1989, ISBN 1-55835-051-9
  • William Martin: Gunnar Birkerts and Associates . Edited and photographer Yukio Futagawa. ADA Edita (GA Architect), Tokyo, 1982
  • Gunnar Birkerts & Associates, IBM Information Systems Center, Sterling Forest, NY, 1972; Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1973 . Edited and photographer Yukio Futagawa. ADA EDITA (GA Architecture), Tokyo 1974

Web links

Commons : Gunnar Birkerts  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Grimes: Gunnar Birkerts, Architect, Dies at 92; Gave Shape to the Unexpected , New York Times , August 17, 2017 (en.)
  2. ^ Gunnar Birkerts: Biography. Michigan Modern, archived from the original on June 2, 2013 ; accessed on August 16, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Architect Gunnar Birkerts died at the age of 92 on nachrichten.at on August 16, 2017
  4. ↑ Jaunā LNB ēka . Website of the Latvian National Library, accessed on August 16, 2017 (Latvian; the new building of the LNB).
  5. ^ Sven Birkerts, Martin Schwartz: Gunnar Birkerts - Metaphoric Modernist. Menges, Stuttgart, 2009, ISBN 978-3-936681-26-0 (pdf, 1.46 MB).
personal data
SURNAME Birkerts, Gunnar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Birkerts, Gunārs; Birkerts, Gunnar Gunivaldis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American architect of Latvian origin
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga , Latvia
DATE OF DEATH 15th August 2017
Place of death Needham (Massachusetts) , United States