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Gunnar Gunivaldis Birkerts was born in Riga, Latvia on January 17, 1925. At the end of World War II, he fled Latvia ahead of the advancing Soviet Army and made his way to Germany. He received diplomas in engineering and architecture from Stuttgart's technical university. He emigrated to the United States in 1949. He worked for the Chicago firm Perkins & Will for two years before joining Eero Saarinen's firm. In 1956, he joined Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates. In 1959, he and his colleague Frank Straub formed their own firm, Birkerts & Straub. In 1963, he started his own firm, Gunnar Birkerts & Associates. He designed the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, the American embassy in Caracas, and the Latvian National Library in Riga. He taught architecture at the University of Michigan from 1959 to 1990. He wrote several books including Subterranean Urban Systems, Gunnar Birkerts: Buildings, Projects, and Thoughts, 1960-1985, and Process and Expression in Architectural Form. In 1981, he received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture. He died on August 15, 2017 at the age of 92. (Bowker Author Biography).
Gunnar Birkerts has designed some of America's most innovative and distinctive architecture. A member of the Modern Movement's postwar generation, he has shown that modernism can accommodate lyrical, emotional, dynamic, and regional influences within its abstract construct. His design concepts, which grow from the individual character of site and client, defy stylistic categorization. Over his career he has won more than fifty major awards. The Architecture of Gunnar Birkerts not only presents the architects work, but also explores the influences of his background, design methodology, and philosophy on his buildings. -- from book flap.
An extensively updated new edition of a classic architectural text Today's most comprehensive compendium of architectural drawing types and methods, both hand drawn and computer generated, Architectural Drawing: A Visual Compendium of Types and Methods remains a one-of-a-kind visual reference and an outstanding source of guidance and inspiration for students and professionals at every level. The Third Edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect a wider range of techniques and styles than ever before, including: * 1,100 illustrations by today's most noted architects, including Tadao Ando, Rebecca Binder, Mario Botta, Lord Foster, Massimiliano Fuksas, Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl, Ricardo Legorreta, Richard Meier, I. M. Pei, Cesar Pelli, Renzo Piano, Antoine Predock, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and Venturi Scott Brown * Over 250 new drawings * 30% new and revised material * A new, more user-friendly structure "This volume reveals how architects approach drawing as a process wherein ideas are given form. As a tool for teaching, these examples become important in students' understanding of the formal and technical aspects of design thought. In an age of digital technologies, this work emphasizes the intimate relationship that exists between the drawing and its maker, the process between paper, hand, and mind." -LaRaine Papa Montgomery, Professor of Architecture/Graphics Coordinator, Savannah College of Art and Design "A wonderful resource on design visualization and graphic communication that covers all aspects of drawing conventions and manual techniques of representation. Richly illustrated and professionally presented in a way that makes it accessible to beginners as well as advanced students, this book stands out as a core reference for courses on design graphics." -Dr. Samer Akkach, Senior Lecturer in Architecture and DesignThe University of Adelaide, South Australia "This book contains an abundance of some of the most inventive graphic presentations by world-class architects. As I browse through this book, the hundreds of pages of thought provoking images both relax and excite me, an experience that only a good read can bring. It illuminates the process of visual thinking behind some of the most creative minds. As the profession is becoming more and more constrained by economics and time, this book reminds us of how ideas in architecture began." -William W. P. Chan, AIA, Assistant Professor of Architecture, Morgan State University, Institute of Architecture and Planning
Generously illustrated with concept development sketches as well as site plans, section drawings, full schematics, and photographs of finished buildings, this engaging volume focuses on "organic synthesis," the creative process that is architect Gunnar Birkerts's methodology and philosophy. Birkerts likens his organic approach to listening to music: the music must be heard as it unfolds; an attempt to perceive it all at once would reduce it to noise. Organic synthesis occurs as all aspects of a project present themselves: the building site, the building program and budget, available materials and technologies, emotional or intuitive content revealed through architect-client interaction.
This is the first fully comprehensive survey and analysis of masted structures and covers examples that have evolved during the past three decades. Masted Structures are one of the most interesting developments in post-war architecture resulting from a combination of technology, structural engineering theory and a collaboration between architects and engineers. This is an essential guide for architects to the structural and constructional implications of masted forms in relation to space enclosure, patterns of loading and use of differing materials and techniques. This useful volume will enable architects and engineers to understand the origins, development and nature of masted structures and will provide a stimulating basis for future design.
Modern Schools: A Century of Design for Education is a comprehensive survey of modern K-12 schools from Frank Lloyd Wright to Morphosis an in-depth design study that explores the fundamental relationship between architecture, education, and the design of contemporary learning environments. Its focus is on the underlying design themes and characteristic features that support and enhance basic aspects of learning and, in the process, create an architectural expression that is both meaningful and lasting. The breadth of its scope includes influences of contemporary educational ideas and practices, related design concepts and strategies, and most importantly, the resulting impact of both on real environments for learning. This remarkable survey and project study the first of its kind is an essential and important sourcebook for architects, school planners, educators, and anyone else interested in contemporary school design. The body of work presented, which is international in scope, underscores the unique architectural potential of this important project type, and highlights design themes that remain fundamentally relevant for architects and designers today. Presentation material includes more than 900 contemporary and historical photographs, mostly in color, and more than 200 detailed architectural plans drawings of schools by many of the outstanding design architects of the modern era. Modern Schools: A Century of Design for Education features the work of more than 60 architects worldwide, including twentieth century masters Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, and Eliel and Eero Saarinen, as well as contemporaries such as Morphosis, Coop Himmel(b)lau, Behnisch & Partners, and Patkau Architects, among many others.
Latvian-born architect Gunnar Birkerts belongs to the second wave of modernists who arrived in the United States from abroad, a group that includes Kevin Roche and Cesar Pelli among others. This work presents his cultural perspectives as well as his family insights to bear, offering a unique portrait of a life and career. Latvian-born architect Gunnar Birkerts belongs to the second wave of modernists who arrived in the United States from abroad, a group that includes Kevin Roche and Cesar Pelli among others. Educated at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Birkerts worked first with Eero Saarinen in his now-legendary office in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and later was chief designer for Minoru Yamasaki. At that time both Saarinen and Yamasaki were developing their distinctive architectural signatures and building their international renown. Subsequently Birkerts established his own practice, evolving a design process and a philosophy with its own original profile. His approach does not seek a 'right style for the job' in the manner of Saarinen. From the first, Birkerts' work was tied to a program as well as a particular context - a place - to the extent that it became expressive of the surrounding landscape and accommodating to the existing vernacular. Birkerts' designs, from the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis to the Corning Museum of Glass to the Houston Arts Museum and recently the Latvian National Library, shows him exploring with ever greater resource and inventiveness the expressive possibilities of symbol and metaphor. Form, he believes, expresses function, and does so with its own rich, meaningful vocabulary. Birkerts uses visual metaphors to link program, client, and landscape in a resonant solution. His methodology of using metaphor - meaning - as a first principle, as a generator of design concept, is unusual in the profession, but it is vitally connected to his Latvian heritage and his family background as the son of a folklorist and writer. This heritage is given a new turn here, for the biographical text of the book has been written by his son, Sven Birkerts, who is a noted literary critic and author of the influential book "The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age". He has also written a memoir, "My Sky Blue Trades" which describes at some length his coming of age struggles with his architect father. Now, years later, Sven brings his cultural perspectives as well as his family insights to bear, offering a unique portrait of a life and career. History and description are enlivened throughout by observations and reflections on the career - the destiny - of this master of the expressive concept. The book is richly illustrated and complemented by descriptive assessments of the projects by Martin Schwartz, who is an architect and writer and who teaches at Lawrence Technical University in Southfield, Michigan.