Edition Axel Menges GmbH Esslinger Straße 24 D-70736 Stuttgart-Fellbach tel. +49-0711-574759 fax +49-0711-574784

Gunnar Birkerts – Metaphoric Modernist With an introductory essay by Sven Birkerts and architectural com- ments by Martin Schwartz. 320 pp. with 410 illus., 242 x 297,5 mm, hard-cover, English ISBN 978-3-936681-26-0 Euro 86.00, sfr 129.00, £ 79.00, US $ 109.00, $A 168.00

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 develop- ing their distinctive architectural signatures and building their inter- national renown. Subsequently Birkerts established his own prac- tice, evolving a design process and a philosophy with its own origi- nal 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 ac- Distributors commodating to the existing vernacular. Birkerts’ designs, from the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis to the Corning Museum of Brockhaus Commission Glass to the Houston Arts Museum and recently the Latvian Nation- Kreidlerstraße 9 al Library, shows him exploring with ever greater resource and in- D-70806 Kornwestheim ventiveness the expressive possibilities of symbol and metaphor. Germany Form, he believes, expresses function, and does so with its own tel. +49-7154-1327-33 rich, meaningful vocabulary. Birkerts uses visual metaphors to link fax +49-7154-1327-13 program, client, and landscape in a resonant solution. His method- [email protected] ology of using metaphor – meaning – as a first principle, as a gener- ator of design concept, is unusual in the profession, but it is vitally RIBA Bookshops Distribution connected to his Latvian heritage and his family background as the 15 Bonhill Street son of a folklorist and writer. London EC2P 2EA This heritage is given a new turn here, for the biographical text of United Kingdom the book has been written by his son, Sven Birkerts, who is a noted tel. +44-20-72567222 literary critic and author of the influential book The Gutenberg Ele- fax +44-20-73742737 gies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. He has also written [email protected] a memoir, My Sky Blue Trades which describes at some length his coming of age struggles with his architect father. Now, years later, National Book Network Sven brings his cultural perspectives as well as his family insights 15200 NBN Way to bear, offering a unique portrait of a life and career. History and Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17214 description are enlivened throughout by observations and reflec- USA tions on the career – the destiny – of this master of the expressive tel. +1-800-4626420 concept. The book is richly illustrated and complemented by de- fax +1-800-3384550 scriptive assessments of the projects by Martin Schwartz, who is [email protected] an architect and writer and who teaches at Lawrence Technical University in Southfield, Michigan. Tower Books Unit 2/17 Rodborough Road Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086 Australia tel. +61-2-99755566 fax +61-2-99755599 [email protected] From the first, Birkerts’ work was tied to a program as well as a par- Sven Birker Latvian-born architect Gunnar Birkerts belongs to the second wave of Modernists who arrived ticular context – a place – to the extent that it became expressive of in the United States from abroad, a group that the surrounding landscape and accommodating to the existing ver- includes Kevin Roche and Cesar Pelli among nacular. Birkerts’ designs, from the Federal Reserve Bank in Minnea- others. Educated at the Technische Hochschu- le in Stuttgart, Birkerts worked first with Eero polis to the Corning Museum of Glass to the Houston Arts Museum Saarinen in his now-legendary office in Bloom- and recently the Latvian National Library, shows him exploring with field Hills, Michigan, and later was chief designer

ts for Minoru Yamasaki. At that time both Saarinen ever greater resource and inventiveness the expressive possibilities and Yamasaki were developing their distinctive of symbol and metaphor. Form, he believes, expresses function, and / architectural signatures and building their inter- does so with its own rich, meaningful vocabulary. Birkerts uses visual Mar national renown. Subsequently Birkerts estab- lished his own practice, evolving a design pro- metaphors to link program, client, and landscape in a resonant solu- cess and a philosophy with its own original pro- tin Schwar tion. file. 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 Mu- tz seum of Glass to the Houston Arts Museum and recently the Latvian National Library, shows him

Gunnar Birkerts exploring with ever greater resource and inven- tiveness the expressive possibilities of symbol and metaphor. Form, he believes, expresses function, and does so with its own rich, mean- ingful vocabulary. Birkerts uses visual metaphors to link program, client, and landscape in a re- sonant solution. His methodology of using met- aphor – meaning – as a first principle, as a gen- erator of design concept, is unusual in the pro- fession, 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 Gu- tenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Elec- tronic 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 per- spectives as well as his family insights to bear, offering a unique portrait of a life and career. His- tory 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 com- plemented by descriptive assessments of the projects by Martin Schwartz, who is an architect and writer and who teaches at Lawrence Tech- nical University in Southfield, Michigan. Menges

086.00 Euro ISBN 978-3-936681-26-0 129.00 sfr 10900 079.00 £ 109.00 US$ 168.00 $A 9 783936 681260 Gunnar Birkerts Gunnar Birkerts Metaphoric Modernist

Introductory essay Sven Birkerts Architectural comments Martin Schwartz

Edition Axel Menges 7 Gunnar Birkerts: Preface Columbus, Indiana 220 – Anchorage Library, An- 8 Sven Birkerts: Modernism and timeless form chorage, Alaska 226 – Minnesota History Center, St. Paul, Minnesota 230 – Schembechler Hall, 28 Expressive minimalism University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 232 – Cultural Center of Leopoldville, Leopoldville, Con- Papal Altar and Furniture, Pontiac Superdome, go 30 – Technical University, Ankara, Turkey 34 – Pontiac, Michigan 238 – United States Embassy Schwartz Summer Residence, Northville, Michi- office building, Caracas, Venezuela 240 – Kemper gan 36 – University Reformed Church, Ann Arbor, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Kan- Michigan 38 – Lincoln Elementary School, Colum- sas City, Missouri 242 – Marge Monaghan House, bus, Indiana 42 – Duluth Public Library, Duluth, Drummond Island, Michigan 248 – Grasis Resi- Minnesota 48 – IBM Corporate Computer Center, dence, Vail, Colorado 250 – Latvian National Li- Sterling Forest, New York 52 – Contemporary Art brary, Riga, Latvia 254 Museum, Houston, Texas 56 – Ford Visitors Re- ception Center, Dearborn, Michigan 60 – Munici- 260 Late Modernism pal Fire Station, Corning, New York 62 – Calvary Domino’s Pizza, Inc., corporate headquarters, Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan 66 – IBM office Ann Arbor, Michigan 262 – Domino’s special pro- building, Southfield, Michigan 70 jects, interior design and fittings 266 – Domino’s Tower, Ann Arbor, Michigan 268 – Cellular Com- 74 Modernism in context munications Tower, Domino’s Farms, Ann Arbor, 1300 Lafayette East Apartments, Detroit, Michi- Michigan 270 – Oberlin College Conservatory of gan 76 – Lillibridge Elementary School, Detroit, Music Library addition, Oberlin, Ohio 272 – Church Michigan 78 – Marathon Oil office building, De- of the Servant, Kentwood, Michigan 278 – Law troit, Michigan 82 – Detroit Institute of the Arts, School expansion, Ohio State University, Colum- master plan and South Wing addition, Detroit, bus, Ohio 284 – Juma Al-Majid Centre for Culture Michigan 84 – Travis Residence, Franklin, Michi- and Heritage, Dubai, United Arab Emirates 290 – gan 88 – Fisher Administrative Center, University Central Market restoration and expansion, Riga, of Detroit; Detroit, Michigan 92 – Bald Mountain Latvia 292 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, Recreation Facility, Lake Orion, Michigan 96 – Free- San Jose, California 294 – Kellogg Library, Cali- man Residence, Grand Rapids, Michigan 100 – fornia State University, San Marcos, San Marcos, Massey Ferguson North American Operations Of- California 302 – Cathedral of the Most Blessed fices, Des Moines, Iowa 102 – Ford Pavilion, Hem- Sacrament renovations, Detroit, Michigan 304 – isfair ’68, San Antonio, Texas 104 – Federal Re- The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, Riga, serve Bank, Minneapolis, Minnesota 106 – Dance Latvia 308 Instructional Facility, State University of New York, Purchase 110 – Bardha Residence, Birmingham, 312 Notes Michigan 116 316 Biography

122 The underground and overground buildings 320 Photo credits Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, Mississippi 124 – Vocational Technical Institute, campus master plan 130 – Amsterdam City Hall, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 134 – Corning Public Library, Corn- ing, New York 136 – General Motors Dual Mode Transportation Study 138 – Subterranean Urban- Systems Study 140 – Law Library addition, Uni- versity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 142 – Uris Library addition, Cornell University; Ithaca, New York 148 – Minnesota State Capitol expan- sion, St. Paul, Minnesota 152 – Holtzman & Silver- man office building, Southfield, Michigan 156 – Marriot Library addition, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 160 – Library addition, University of California, San Diego 164

168 The Italian years Novoli I Multi-Use Center, Florence, Italy 170 – Sports and Civic Stadium, Venice, Italy 174 – Tori- no I: Multi-Use Center, Turin, Italy 178 – Torino II: Humanities Faculty Building, University of Torino, © 2009 Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart / London Turin, Italy 182 – Novoli II: Multi-Use Center, Flo- ISBN 978-3-936681-26-0 rence, Italy 186

All rights reserved, especially those of translation 192 Expressive Modernism into other languages. People’s Federal Savings and Loan, Branch Of- fice, Royal Oak, Michigan 194 – Corning Public Prepress: Reinhard Truckenmüller, Stuttgart Library II, Corning, New York 198 – United States Printing and binding: SC International Pte Ltd, Sin- Embassy office building, Helsinki, Finland 200 – gapore Museum of Glass, Corning, New York 204 – Col- lege of Law, University of Iowa, Iowa City 212 – Editing: Nora Krehl-von Mühlendahl Ferguson Residence (Villa Ginny), Kalamazoo, Design: Axel Menges Michigan 218 – St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, Preface a design process immersed in the easy manipu- lation of screen images. We have never lost the It’s true – the title of this book identifies me as a need for architecture that respects landscape, Modernist. I accept the label. As a child of my human comforts, and that seeks sustainability – times, my history, I cannot think of myself as be- livable solutions. ing anything else. The Modern is in my blood; it Globalism – the kind of design that looks past was the Zeitgeist that shaped me, not just visual- the vernacular in its search for a completely con- ly and artistically, but socially, intellectually, maybe temporary idiom – tends to remove the regional even emotionally. I see the world through its lens. and national characteristics; it violates the essen- Everything meaningful built after I was born I con- tial – and distinct – context. I believe in an archi- sider Modern. tecture that maintains its regional alliances. The first generation of European Modernists, I also believe, the wonders of CAD technology the »masters«, were dogmatic, and what they did notwithstanding, in the brain-to-hand-to-eye- and pronounced became the rules. I think of Mies back-to-brain connection as the basis of my cre- van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier. ative process. The moving hand has an intelli- My influences, however, were the architects of the gence of its own, one that we discount too easily Second Generation: Aalvar Aalto, and then Hans in our move to the computer-mouse. For me the Scharoun, Carlo Scarpa and Jørn Utzon. Once train of the creative process, the trail, is the meta- I came to America and began my apprenticeship, morphosis evidenced in my hand sketches. I save I liked the work of Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph and, them. My design originates in a synthesis of prac- of course, the Saarinens. tical factors and appropriate expressions. Critics I believe that it was »destiny« that brought me have said: »His style is no style.« I accept that as together with Eero Saarinen. I continue to debate a kind of compliment – every one of my solutions the meaning of this profound encounter – both in is unique. my life and my career. The professional attraction Architecture must address not just the practi- was the original impetus, but the learning experi- cal need for shelter, but also the human need for ence was lasting on many levels. One definite in- meaning. I consider metaphor and symbolism to fluence was Eero’s relentless pursuit of invention. be integral to my concepts, and I draw on my He was tireless. He was always asking: »What subconscious intuition for both. I see forms as has been done? What is the next thing?« This both functional and meaningful. A building is serv- was, of course, also the Modernist credo. ing its users and at the same time responding to Every structure that I have built has been a its environment. »first« for me – I have refused to emulate any A practitioner is not always insightful about his existing form or idea. own practice, nor can he see the arc of his career I was also determined not to look back. I as clearly as someone looking from the outside. searched for new ways to advance and thought I am fortunate in having two different perspectives in terms of these »firsts«. One such first for me to complement the visual record of my work. My was in the design of the Lincoln Elementary son, Sven, is a practicing critic and essayist, and School. Things that seem common – or at least he has supplied the so-called »big picture«, the not unusual – were groundbreaking in 1965. The biographical overview that takes into account school was planned with a handicapped ramp both the public career and the more intimate pri- and an elevator. vate life. He has, with explanatory input, told the In 1974, I received a research grant to explore story of my life in architecture. subterranean space development and the space Architectural writer Martin Schwartz, mean- above it. My new focus resulted in several earth- while, provides an informed descriptive commen- covered university-library solutions, starting with tary, explaining and assessing the projects one the University of Michigan Law Library in 1974, by one. Taken together, the two vantages offer a and later including other implementations for kind of stereoscope portrait. I am deeply indebt- Cornell (1980), San Diego (1987) and Utah (1992). ed to both for their thoughtful work. I had already realized the »green« component in I would also like to thank Axel Menges and what I think of as the DNA of my concepts. Dorothea Duwe for their interest, initiative and Much noticed was the 1968 »first« – the cate- hospitality as well as Sally Bund and Nancy nary structure-supported Federal Reserve Bank Bartlett of the Bentley Historical Archives at the in Minneapolis. The universal recognition by the University of Michigan, for all their expertise and architectural profession and press was reward- generous assistance. It goes without saying – ing. but I say it – that I owe a lifetime’s debt to my Building enclosures represented other innova- wife Sylvia. tions. Daylight control and energy conservation were important considerations at the time. For Gunnar Birkerts Massey-Ferguson I conceived the first double ex- terior skin wall. This was in 1966 – unfortunately the project was not realized. However, in 1974 the IBM regional office building was awarded the first »Corning Glass Energy Award« for its exterior wall concept. The solution addressed daylight control and delivery but also achieved a meaning- ful graphic expression. Today in architecture we see a great many computer-generated building forms. These are mostly freestanding icons, with little respect for the surrounding context – possibly the result of

7 Modernism and timeless form what he calls those concept drawings where he 1. Conversation sketch. sign, but in fact I’ve always sensed it there – the them – thick, fragrant, Old World-style books, on Sven Birkerts tries to find the complete DNA of a project, the 2. Merija Saule-Sleine. tension between the deep traditions of an Old shelves, piled on surfaces, stacked against walls; part that somehow reflects the idea of the whole – 3. Peteris Birkerts. World home culture and a dynamic Modernism. paintings – landscapes, mainly – a piano with a The world of architecture, like the larger world that but his own interpretation of his architectural de- coverlet. Flowers. An intimate, intellectual clutter, contains it, is in a state of accelerated transforma- velopment. I have it here and it’s a fascinating The man can sometimes come across as a psy- very much reflecting the life of the mind and the tion, its practice and procedures at every level document, for several reasons. For one thing, this chological enigma, if not to others, then certainly arts. now shaped by the powerful pressure of the digi- emblem – or embryo – is drawn in the same style to those who are closest to him. When the family Merija herself was formal, very much »old tal. The ancient art of Palladio and his generations as all those shirt-cardboard sketches I remember. – mainly his children, my sister Andra, my brother school«, still opinionated and capable of strict pro- of successors – an art so long rooted in the archi- Once again, I marvel at the continuity of hand and Erik and I – discusses him outside his hearing, we nouncements. She had remained in Riga during tect’s designing sensibility, the product of hand- eye, the loose movements of the hand, the pres- often throw up our hands in perplexity – or frustra- and after the war, in part out of her devotion to her eye intelligence – has entered the era of the »pro- sure of the repeating overlays. But the first thing tion. There are so many ways that he doesn’t profession. I used to characterize her to people as gram«, the software prosthesis. From conception I wondered when I saw it, before I moved in clos- seem to »get« himself, refuses to see the causes a female Latvian »Mr. Chips« – a beloved Gymna- to realization, every stage of the process is differ- er to study the details, was whether this was or effects of his actions and pronouncements. sium teacher who had been around long enough ent – it is out of the hands of the individual, if not similar in any other way to those conceptual Much as he loves ad hoc psychologizing, he has to be teaching the children of her former students. completely then significantly. It is far too early to sketches – whether he actually thought that this no developed psychological theory about the And the few times I visited her there in her old evaluate the nature of the change. We can only orderly arrangement of shapes really offered the sources of his own artistic development. Pressed, age, she was tended to daily by a cadre of her remark it. And, in remarking it, cast a look back- best possible synthesis of his career. Synthyesis – he will agree that he is probably too close to the former students, her »girls«, who had kept up vis- ward, to try to better grasp the meaning of what he never tires of saying it – is what he is after in source – himself – to have any degree of objectivi- iting rotations for many years. In addition to her are suddenly the »old ways«. What better way is his design conceptions. ty. In the same way, he puts forth few interpreta- teaching, she was a widely respected folklore there to do this than by looking at the life and The life-sketch in front of me resembles either tions of his own childhood years, especially in scholar. She worked for years, with Peter Birkerts, work of one of the last Modernists, an architect a snowman, with three successively smaller cir- terms of the connection to architecture, though amassing and categorizing folk sayings and anec- who came to maturity in the last heyday of the cles capped by a fourth, a darker circle that has he is interested enough in recalling what he dotes and publishing the findings in several vol- mode, and who has continued designing to this two antenna-like protrusions, or else an insect, can. umes. To her very last days she retained a schol- day, carrying the spirit of the tradition into our a beetle of some kind, with its feelers extended. Born in Riga in 1925, raised in a city apartment arly air – always sitting very straight, speaking uneasy present. Only when I study it more closely do I understand by his mother, Merija Saule-Sleine, who worked slowly and with formal diction, defining words if Gunnar Birkerts – my father – is an architect that it’s meant to be read downward. The feelers full-time as a teacher and a folklorist, my father she thought she needed to, passing along advice from the era of the pencil. This does not mean are labeled »Merija« and »Peteris«, his mother and works hard to avoid mythologizing a solitary child- and instruction and wisdom from the various writ- that he fears or rejects technology – not a bit – father, and they connect directly with the smallest, hood or the impact of an absent father. But the ers she admired. but that his design process is deeply rooted in the darkest circle, marked »Latvia«, where my father rest of us keep faith with the basics of modern My father acknowledges that his mother’s influ- call-and-response process of hand and eye. For was born and lived until he was sixteen. The larger psychology and believe that this had to be the ence was enormous, not just as far as character him moving a pencil across a page is a way of circle below is »Stuttgart«, where he studied archi- biggest shaping influence. Not just the fact of be- and discipline were concerned, but also insofar thinking, a way of getting hold of a visual idea with tecture at the Technische Hochschule in the mid- ing raised through early years by a single parent as she infused him with an intense sense of his his whole intuitive being. Growing up, this fasci- late 1940s. The next, still larger, has Saarinen in- (though it’s so common now, it was much more culture, from its etymologies and folklore (which nated me. I would often study his drafting-table scribed on the left, Yamasaki on the right – repre- unusual then), but the nature of that experience. would prove so important many decades later in when no one was around. I knew it was the site senting the two main phases of his American ap- His mother was a formidably strong woman, intel- designing the Latvian National Library), to its mu- of intense activity. He would be working there at prenticeship. Underneath that circle, very small, ligent and willful, with determined theories about sic, art, and literature. More than giving him spe- night, when I was supposed to be asleep, but positioned like a belt-buckle, is a mysterious node child-rearing and discipline. She ran their apart- cific instruction, she filled him with a lasting sense sometimes I would come out for some reason and marked »10 Years«, and underneath that, the ment life with high expectations – that her son of the importance and seriousness of culture and see him sitting there, wrapped up in his own dis- base, the largest circle, »Own Work«, subdivided would be neat, orderly, and that he would take learning, an influence that he and my mother then traction, pushing his hands through his hair, fo- by lateral lines, and numbered 1, 2, and 3, repre- on a good deal of responsibility. He had chores, handed on in their own way. And in later years af- cused on things I had no idea about. What un- senting the three main phases of his own design. schedules, and there were penalties exacted for ter the war, when he and Merija reconnected seen world could keep a person so preoccupied? What I haven’t yet mentioned – and to me this any shirking of duties. I find that I avoid using again, she would be his staunchest advocate. In I would go back later to search for evidence, is as significant as the circles and the various tag- his case as an example for my own children – I her eyes he was carrying on the creative legacy moving the T-square up and down on its tightly phrases and arrows that annotate the indicated don’t want to turn their grandfather into an op- of his father – or so I would guess. stretched wire, looking at the pencils and the periods – is the vertical line that neatly bisects the pressive emblem of how hard things used to be. Any psychologist would be fascinated by the black marker-pens he liked to use, shuffling drawing. Looking at it, I found myself remember- But in fact it was in many ways an austere situa- story of my father’s father. Peteris Birkerts was al- through the stacked shirt-cardboards that he col- ing the term »bilateral symmetry« from high school tion. ready a highly-regarded writer and polemicist lected and covered with his sketches. I remember biology class. Why this division? This doesn’t look My father was separated from his mother for when his son was born. Having been educated in these sketches especially – always dense, shapes to be the map of a divided life. The only actual op- many years – from when he left home at 16 until America – at Valparaiso and Columbia – he was and lines gone over and over until they had a busy position indicated would be in the middle circle, 1968 when they actually saw each other again – known for his ambitious syntheses of important kind of mass. His natural hand movement was where he has written »Saarinen« on one side of and there was a period during and after the war trends in European and American intellectual life, circular, loose, and to get started on anything he the vertical and »Yamasaki« on the other. neither knew if the other was alive. They first re- and he published some of the first Latvian studies would draw nests of circles, nodes. I suspect he But I interpret this differently, less literally, as connected through a guarded correspondence in of psychology and sociology. He sacrificed every- would start making shapes before he had any marking a basic impulse to symmetry. And it’s 1946 – the letters used pseudonyms and couched thing to the altar of work, separating from Merija idea where they would go, the idea being that the true, in many ways the architect is an orderly, bal- everything in private code. The contact expanded just when fatherhood was about to make its prac- shape might jump-start the thinking eye, the anced person. He keeps organized files; he plans only gradually in the early postwar years. I did not tical demands on him. But though he moved just emerging conception then giving direction and fo- ahead – other cardboard sheets featured neatly meet my grandmother until my teens and did not a short distance away – to a small house at Riga’s cus to the hand. I find myself doing the same printed lists of tasks, things to remember, each see where my parents had grown up until 1972 Jurmala – my father never met him. Instead of a thing sometimes before I write, less to get ideas marked with its neatly drawn squares. Order, fore- when we traveled to Latvia as a family for the first father, he was given a legend. And a set of rea- than to put myself into an associative mind-state. sight, a daily plan of attack – it fits the man I know, time – I was already in my early twenties then. sons – why it was that he had gone. Merija offered I wait for the moment when the pencil moves though where architecture itself is concerned, he Merija lived in the same apartment that my father elaborate accounts of the man’s important work without my direction. But where I produce simple departed from literal – classic – symmetry early on had grown up in, except that it had been subdi- and his need for isolation. This, she explained, arabesques, the architect always drew dense and in his career. But there is more to this symmetry. In vided after the war to make room for a Russian was the price of creativity. vigorous morphing shapes – I don’t know if I have another sense I see this vertical line also repre- family. When I watched him moving around in Did all of this – the loss, the tension of the ab- ever seen him do a clean-lined sketch. senting a very basic tension of elements, one that those narrow, high-ceilinged rooms, I could al- sence, his mother’s accounts and rationaliza- I wasn’t at all surprised then that when I asked makes immediate intuitive sense to me. I don’t most feel him trying to come to terms with the tions – eventually contribute to my father’s fierce him to reflect on the major phases and influences know whether he would agree with this or not – new walls, how they jarred against his remem- desire, first for achievement, and architectural ex- of his own career, he presented me with a sketch I will need to ask him. I’m talking about the split bered sense of space. But even in spite of how cellence, but in later years for recognition as well? made up of these same loose curves and circles. between the organic and the orthogonal, of much was changed, I got a strong feeling of that He doesn’t admit it himself, not directly. But a visi- It was right in character. He wasn’t thinking about course, but also a larger, deeper dividedness. childhood home. Strong continuities remained. tor with a psychological bent might take great in- a building this time, or one of his »embryos« – Maybe I’m imposing this, making a writerly de- There were books everywhere, hundreds of terest in inspecting the glass case next to his stu-

8 9 dio, where medals and certificates of professional one look told you that he was turning some prob- Though it may seem a small event in the larger first arrival in America, and then a deeply fortu- achievement are arranged alongside the many lem over and over in his mind. scheme of things, the personal consequences itous late-night meeting in the Saarinen office books of Peteris Birkerts he has collected. were immense. The soil must have been ready for soon after – he does not forget to also note other Are these family matters relevant to the archi- My father does not linger much on his childhood – the seed. »When I saw that drawing I suddenly critical swerves, including a close brush with tecture? A pure design theorist might say no, but I the same few stories get recycled over and over – knew what I wanted – I wanted to do that.« death when a low-slung military cable caught him believe that everything pertains at some level, and and he is no less reticent with respect to his later That one exposure was just the beginning of under the jaw and somersaulted him out of the that a compulsion to please the father had to be boyhood years. Is it that he really doesn’t remem- what eventually became an incessant search for truck bed he was standing in. It was just after part of the formation, the relentless drive for per- ber, or that he just chooses not to »go there«. I visual stimulus, the steady fanning of the imagina- the war and he was still in Germany – in fact, he fection. Or else, on a different level, that nothing can’t make up my mind. He does recall being tion with shapes, lines and impressions of all was on his way to see Sylvia – and a slightly dif- could be more integral to this architect’s clean, highly self-sufficient, getting himself to and from kinds. That obsession, that absolute focus has ferent landing or impact could easily have been austere Modernism than the crowded space of school, letting himself into the apartment at the never gone away. For me growing up in our home fatal. that original apartment. That contradiction is end of the day to do his homework and wait for in Michigan this grazing was an activity so familiar deeply fascinating. I can call up those rooms in my his mother. She was so organized and punctual as to go unquestioned. The architectural books We never know which events will turn out to be mind’s eye, and beside them conjure up an image herself that he could time her appearance at the and journals everywhere, the sight of the man the decisive ones or just how they will affect us. of the Houston Museum of Contemporary Art, or corner to the minute. He likes telling that story – leafing, pausing, bending in, gathering information. From the moment he saw the older student’s ren- the Corning Glass Museum. What makes the path there is something confirming about character and I didn’t understand it then. Ready as I was to de- dering my father was possessed by his admiration from A to B? There is a connection. But I don’t reliability to be found there. What did he do by plore the fact that he didn’t, as my mother did, – he loved the modern look of the rendering, the think it was opposition as protest, so much, more himself? He read, but by his own admission never read books, though he will remind me that he read perspective – and moved to imitation. He began opposition as self-definition. The architect would became a great reader. Instead, he did his school- a great deal in his younger years, and further, that to draw buildings of his own, trying to reproduce eventually create a counter-world for himself – he work (he was always a top student) pursued pro- he knows the texts of these hundreds of architec- the feeling of what he had seen. I have looked had to – turning away from folklore and books to a jects, drew, built things. Built things ... This seems ture books backwards and forewards. My point, through the small file of schoolboy sketches that visual idiom mainly bare of associations. The past like a lead to pursue, but he won’t tell any but however, is that I looked past the other kind of he keeps in a drawer in his studio – painstaking had to be left behind. He remarks on this often – bare-bones stories. In the absence of good narra- »reading« that he did, which was focused, sus- reinventions of perspective, carefully shaded that his interest has never been in looking back, tives, I find myself focusing in on a photograph tained, and encyclopeadic – the reading of im- façades, apertures hand-drawn to scale. They are but always forward, always to the next thing. This that shows him in his early teens. He is standing ages. He continues to this day. Even in his early simple and direct, but they take on a whole differ- would certainly help to explain his eventual fixation with two other boys, looking as intent as could be. 80s he is pushed forward by this relentless, impa- ent meaning in the light of what he ended up do- on Eero Saarinen: the Finnish architect followed He looks especially lean and serious and hollow- tient inventorying of images. ing with his life. the same restless impulse. cheeked, I think. All three are studying a large and There was little in his schoolboy world to guide Restlessness. I think if I were given one of impressively intricate model airplane they have I recognize it better now, just as I understand how him toward architecture. In his home life he was those flash response tests by a psychologist, built from strips of balsa wood – a very sophisti- systematically he archived what he looked at in his surrounded by books and talk of literature; his asked to associate without thinking to the prompt cated-looking structure. And this, Gunnar has told memory. These photographs and sketches then mother’s friends and visitors were all teachers, »Gunnar Birkerts«, I might start with »restless«, or me, was just a prelude. He and his friends were became available for quick retrieval. Any discus- writers and intellectuals. There were words and »driven«. When Gunnar was running at full-steam, far-along in the construction of a full-sized glider – sion of design or building we had when I got older books in abundance, but very little to give him a which was often, or wanting to be – which was a glider meant for flight – when the war came and was punctuated with references. »Here«, my fa- visual vocabulary to work with. The one exception the rest of the time – it seemed he had a hard put a stop to the project. Both the photo and the ther would say, »I’ll show you.« And he would was the early connection with a man who would time waiting for the rest of us to catch up. His story testify to the beginnings of what will be a life- cross to one shelf or another in his studio – walls become more decisively influential later on. This pace and the world’s would feel out of synch. He long fascination with making. But he leaves it to of journals methodically arranged – right away was Aleksanders Klinklavs, one of Latvia’s leading was not a man who tolerated long lines or delays me to draw that connecting thread. putting his hand on what he needed, finding the architects and the uncle of his boyhood (and now easily. Professionally this translated into a dy- How does a person absorb influence? My fa- page, pointing out the feature, the motif, whatever life-long) friend August Grasis. Once his first inter- namism that others, his colleagues especially, re- ther doesn’t claim any special interest in buildings he was after. est in architecture had been kindled, my father be- marked on. His good friend and fellow designer or things architectural during these early years, That search goes on. The architect is always gan to pay more attention to Klinklavs’ various Charles Bassett once said: »Gunnar was born though he also adds that he knew his city inti- browsing, looking. For what? The full answer is, buildings, turning his attention as well to the vari- with the engine running.« But this feature of his mately. Riga was easily covered on foot, and in of course, complex. In his early years, though, he ous eclectic structures he had been passing for temperament could also create friction in the those days people walked everywhere. Though he was in search of inspirations, artistic alignments, many years in Riga. This was when the form- home life – he was not often tolerant of late ar- was not yet studying buildings (it seems to me directions, evidence of some next new thing. seeking imagination can be said to have awak- rivals, unfinished chores. He held the rest of us to that half of my childhood was spent waiting while When he thinks back on his years of study at ened. As he has often observed, »I did not need his own high standard, and all of us were afraid of the preoccupied architect paced back and forth in Stuttgart’s Technische Hochschule, for example, to learn the evolution of architectural styles from disappointing or angering him. The man had a front of some constructed thing), he remembers one thing he remembers most vividly is going to books – that evolution was all around me, ex- temper, but mercifully it was of the cloudburst va- clearly the variety of the city’s buildings, the strik- sit in the library of the American Information Cen- pressed in the changing façades of this eclectic riety, over almost as soon as it had begun. I use ing juxtapositions of medieval Old Riga with the ter to study the latest magazines from America. old city.« The old Hanseatic city was an archive of the past tense here because the years have mel- later Art Deco and Art Nouveau façades and dé- There – he likes to draw out the threads of con- expressive traditions, from the Schindleresque- lowed his disposition considerably. cor. nection – his eye was first arrested by the projects Neoclassical Opera House and the eclectic Gothic Along with this impatience, this drivenness, By the 1930s, though, at least in Europe and coming out of the Michigan office of Eliel and Eero guild houses, to the Medieval Cathedral and the are several related qualities. Perfectionism. Focus. America, the idea of Modernism had taken root. Saarinen. Given his single-mindedness, the inten- Jugendstil and National Romantic style buildings. Gunnar has always had a strong sense of »getting Modernism, with its clean lines, its rejection of sity of his self-creation, that place became a kind He now took them in as something more than just it right«. In his mind, I think, he creates a picture of sentiment, and refusal of historical reference, ex- of fantasy destination. When he ended up working interesting features of the urban environment: he a specific ideal – a building, say, or how an event cept the implicit reference to the future – the histo- there several years later, he would register one of understood them as evolutionary stages of archi- should happen – and he will do everything in his ry to come – first reached my father one afternoon the many destiny shocks of his life. That location, tecture. power to realize that ideal. Through painstaking in the corridor of his gymnasium. It quite literally that intense creative nexus outside Detroit had preparation, revision, and sheer willful insistence. stopped him in his tracks. In those days students been felt to be a kindred place long before it be- The war brought enormous disruptions and un- This was what kept him up at his drafting table who wanted to go on to study architecture were came his home. expected dislocations to him as to so many – my long into the night, and had him working on week- already preparing in their gymnasium classes. My father, while in no conventional sense a reli- father was uprooted from his home, his city, his ends instead of taking up some hobby. It was not, Their designs and sketches would be posted for gious man, has long put his faith in the idea that country, when he was still in his teens. There were as some might be tempted to argue, that he was others to see. What reached my father with the intensely focused feelings and desires are an- hardships, frightening transits from place to place, a workaholic. Rather, he needed to make whatev- force of revelation was an upper-classman’s flashy swered by circumstance. In fact, he likes nothing and a profound ongoing uncertainty about the er he was doing his best, and if that required work rendering of a »modern« urban building. He stood better than to go over the events of his life with an future. He doesn’t like to talk much about those and more work, then that was what he did. With before it, enthralled by the lines, the bold econo- eye out for decisive turns and developments that years – a numbed sort of survival mentality took single-mindedness and focus. His attention was, my, the look. Everything about it felt to him like a later carry a strong sense of being in some way over. He and his friend August scrapped inge- and remains, of the lock-on variety, refusing all signal, advance word of the New. It was one of 4. R. Schmaeling, Latvian National Opera, Riga. intended, part of a larger pattern of significance. niously for food and necessary goods. But under- distraction. If all systems were »go«, then distrac- the first decisive moments in his life as an archi- 5. Michael, Eisenstein Albert Iela 11, Riga. Though he mainly remarks the major, path-deter- neath the chaos and the numbness of loss the tion could include almost anything. At these times tect and he speaks of it often. 6. Eizens Laube, Elizabetes Iela 10 b, Riga. mining events – the role Sylvia would play in his idea of architecture survived. »It was something

10 11 I had to keep me going«, he says. »If I could only all very exciting possibilities – an architect could 7. Rolf Gutbrod, Liederhalle, Stuttgart. get through these times, I thought, I would have a do creative work and have an exciting life. But the 8. Rudolf Steiner, Goetheanum, Dornach. goal, something that made sense.« If anything, the teacher was an influence on other fronts, too. He 9. Sylvia Zvirbulis and Gunnar Birkerts in Noerd- ambition intensified. And then he got his chance. was the first to offer any professional encourage- lingen, 1948. As the war was ending, he made his way to ment. »He was my mentor, he watched and guid- 10. Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart Bavarian Nördlingen in 1945 to stay with August ed my work. Best of all, he liked what he was see- and the Grasis family (Bavaria was a displaced ing; he responded.« Years later the mentor would person zone). Nördlingen, which dated back to visit the Saarinen office in Michigan and as my fa- Roman times, was a unique among cities in that it ther showed him around the office and explained was built in the circular embrace of a 15 million the work he was doing, Gutbrod would see first- year-old crater. The circularity, no less than the hand how far his student had progressed from long-term organic adaptation to this powerful as- those first academic projects. tronomic event, left a visual imprint the architect It is tempting to step in to psychologize here. would absorb and that would later leave its traces For a young man who had grown up without a on several important design concepts. father-figure, who was consumed by a desire to He had heard good things about Stuttgart’s learn about architecture, but also to make his Technische Hochschule, one of the main institu- mark in the world, the stylish Gutbrod cast a se- tions of architecture and engineering in Europe, ductive spell. Certainly he impressed on my father and wanted very much to study there. The reputa- the idea that an architect could make a statement, tion drew him, but only later would he realize what that the vocation had status in the world. An ar- an impressive faculty he would be working with chitect was not just a maker of shelters, he was for the next four years, including the Bauhaus’ an artist. Emotion and temperament, the power Richard Döcker, Adolf Schneck, the traditional of personality – these things mattered. Wilhelm Tiedje, and then the man who would be- At the time, Gutbrod was perhaps more influ- come such an important mentor figure, Rolf Gut- ential as a model, an image, than as a direct de- brod. Looking back, he is emphatic about his de- sign inspiration. The student was more taken with termination. »Nothing was going to get in my way international Modernism, with Bauhaus, Le Cor- – I knew what I wanted and I would do what I had busier, Aalto and Asplund, even Frank Lloyd to.« And though he had no money, circumstances Wright, than with his teacher’s work. When Gut- his supervisors were impressed enough with his dow of the upstairs room where they had their played in his favor – as they would often during brod produced the winning design for the impor- know-how that they loaded on task-responsibili- lessons. these years. As it happened, with the end of the tant Stuttgart Liederhalle competition, he remem- ties far ahead of schedule. My mother remembers a very serious, intense war, the Allies determined that part of the German bers feeling somewhat disappointed. »It was not But the Technische Hochschule also offered young man. »He had such an idea of what he reparation would be to fund education for dis- where I was looking.« Gutbrod’s approach was design as part of the ongoing curriculum, a se- wanted, no doubt in his mind. But he had a repu- placed persons – a postwar scholarship, in effect. not quite what he wanted. He was far more taken quence that culminated in the final year with his tation for being a bit wild. He sometimes drove a My father and August both decided to apply to with images he found in the journals in the library diploma project. Working under the Gutbrod’s motorcycle. He had a quick sense of humor, a the Hochschule, and both were accepted to the of the newly-opened American Information Center. tutelage, my father designed a museum of art for hot temper.« He was deeply affected – shocked – 4-year program, in architecture and engineering »Gutbrod was following Steiner’s principles. The Stuttgart. He remembers some of the influences when Sylvia announced that she was sailing for respectively. shapes were organic, in keeping with the spiritual of the time, architects he was studying, like Alvar America with her parents. He went to see her off. At this point August’s uncle exerted some influ- doctrine of anthroposophy. I was a long way from Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright and Gunnar Asplund, »It was the first time I had cried like that«, he re- ence. Klinklavs was then living in exile in the town that.« There are several ironies to note. One was as well as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. members. »I suddenly knew that this was very se- of Esslingen, and the aspiring student now sought that during the Liederhalle competition my father Saarinen had not yet exerted his influence, but he rious.« The feeling was mutual. They agreed they his advice. He remembers that the older architect was working as a student intern for an architect would very soon. Poring over the publications ar- would correspond regularly and my father re- took an active interest, not only offering practical named Heyer, one of Gutbrod’s rivals in design. riving at the Information Center he was excited by solved that he would get to America. advice about possible courses of study, but also The other, more conceptual and long-term, was his first contact. with projects like the General Mo- And then an opportunity arose for him. An kindling his enthusiasm. Architecture was not just the fact that many decades later, following his tors Tech Center, the Brandeis University site plan, American Lutheran relief organization one day a pipe-dream, it was real – it could be mastered own evolutionary development, the younger archi- the Drake University master plan, and the Smith- posted the names of potential sponsors, people and practiced. tect would find himself connecting in his own way sonian competition. »To me these were coming in willing to provide passage and then room and One of the youngest students enrolled in the ar- to organic expressiveness, at times echoing ele- like news flashes«, he says, »and a great deal was board to prospective immigrants in exchange for chitecture and engineering degree program, he ments of the synthesis he encountered in the coming clear to me very quickly. I was starting to a year’s work. Distance and geography were just was surrounded by older students, many of them work of his first teacher. get glimpses of my direction.« details – this was a way to get to America. With back from their war service and bent on catching After its original buildings were bombed, the no real sense of what he might be getting himself up. But, as my father recalls, they hadn’t yet freed Hochschule had moved to nearby Weissenhof, at Graduating from the Technische Hochschule in in for, my father signed up with a North Dakota themselves from the tyranny of military discipline – the site of the existing art school. One street over 1949, the architect was ready for the next step. rancher. even in lecture halls they tended to sit in forma- was the well-known Weissenhof-Siedlung, the He did not want to stay in Germany. America He has vivid memories of his crossing and ar- tion, the higher-rank officers in front, and soldiers site of the 1927 Modernist exhibition where Mies, seemed like the best destination. It was his Mod- rival. For one thing, he was one of the few on at the back. Gropius and others had designed houses. Stu- ernist Mecca, true, but there was another good shipboard who did not succumb to seasickness. Early on he came under the tutelage of the emi- dents could see it from their windows and were reason. During these years of study, his friend He went to the other extreme. Taking a job with nent architect Rolf Gutbrod, a Rudolf Steiner-in- regularly sent there for their drawing instruction – August had introduced him to Sylvia Zvirbulis, the kitchen crew, he was given unlimited access spired teacher and practitioner who would guide they were urged to learn by copying the best. a young Latvian woman living in nearby Nördlin- to food and, best of all, milk – an all but forgotten much of his curriculum and would eventually serve Design was, of course, an ongoing part of the gen. The connection gradually deepened into a delicacy which he consumed with zeal. Alas, as as advisor for his 4th year thesis project, the de- Hochschule curriculum, but the core of the in- courtship. Both of my parents like to reminisce more and more passengers got sick, he was also sign of a museum of art for Stuttgart. The archi- struction was centered on pragmatic basics. Ma- about this period. »This was not dating like you enlisted to work with mop and bucket – a coun- tect would also eventually provide a letter of intro- terials, structure, building processes. There were have now«, my father insists. »We weren’t driving terbalance to that happy indulgence. duction to Eero Saarinen. good reasons for this. A decimated Germany was around in cars. We walked – great long distances Gutbrod, then in his 30s, cut a very impressive literally digging itself out of the rubble, re-building to get from place to place. When you walk you Twenty four, with only a suitcase and a rancher’s figure. »He had everything«, my father recalls, »a and re-purposing – nothing was to be wasted. talk, and it was the talk that did it. This was the name on a sheet of paper, he had no idea what he successful practice, with important commissions – My father got a direct exposure to the practicum first time I had met a girl who could keep the con- might find when he reached New York. He ex- he had already built office buildings – and a strong of the profession, the drill-work of basics. Indeed, versation going.« There was also some pretense pected his sponsor to be waiting, of course. But personal style. He wore tailored tweeds and he so thorough was the hands-on instruction at of helping her study mathematics, though when he had also, trying to be mysterious, written to drove a Lancia.« On top of this, Gutbrod was mar- Stuttgart that when he later took his first job in we visited Nördlingen on a family trip some years Sylvia, announcing simply: »If you want to see me ried and had a young attractive wife. These were America, at the Chicago firm of Perkins & Will, ago, both laughed when they pointed to the win- I will be in New York on December 19« – he gave

12 13 her the name of the ship and the scheduled time My father relishes the details – and ironies – of 11. Eero Saarinen. drawings and Gutbrod’s letter of recommendation luck – and good word of mouth. After being inter- of docking. She had no other indication of his this trip, and he laughs at his own naivete. Getting 12. Minoru Yamasaki. while the other man sat by. My father, fully focused viewed by Larry Perkins and Phillip Will, the two plans. What happened next has become one of off the bus on Woodward Avenue, he crossed the 13. Eliel Saarinen, Cranbrook School for Boys, on Saarinen, paid him little mind. He talked for principals of the firm, he was offered a job. »They the core myths of my parents’ marriage. He talks street and went directly to the Kingsley Inn. He Bloomfiled Hills, Michigan.. some time with the designer he so admired. Saari- told me I was hired and could start next week. about it almost like a scene from a film. »The ship had his own ideas about what fame meant. He 14. Private house of Eero Saarinen, Bloomfield Hills, nen, for his part, liked what he saw, and took Gut- They had no idea what things were like for me. pulled into the harbor. Everyone was crowded thought he needed only to mention Saarinen’s Michigan. brod’s praises into account. But at that moment, I didn’t want to tell them, so I just asked if I could at the rails to see the great city, ooohing and aaa- name and that everyone would know where to di- 15. Eero and Eliel Saarinen, General Motors Tech- he said, the outlook was not good. Work on the start sooner. ›How soon?‹ they asked. I thought hing. It was different for me. I don’t know what I rect him. It was the first of many fantasies he nical, Center, Warren, Michigan. General Motors Tech Center had recently about my suitcase in that locker. ›Tomorrow?‹ I re- had imagined – but the famous skyscrapers didn’t would have to dispel. He walked around the lobby stopped; there were no openings. At this point member the look they exchanged. ›Fine‹, they seem that tall ... To me it was almost disappoint- and restaurant asking people. »There was some Saarinen’s guest, who had been looking and lis- said. But even that was a problem. I was embar- ing. I was more impressed by the expanse, how kind of luncheon in progress«, he remembers. tening, joined the conversation. He unexpectedly rassed. Finally I swallowed my pride and told them the city just went on and on.« The scale of his fan- »Everyone was drinking cocktails. Nobody had asked if the young architect would consider com- that I didn’t have enough for a room for the night. tasies, he admits, was immense. any idea what I was talking about, who I was ask- ing to work at his firm, then in St. Louis. But he ›You have no money at all?‹ By this point they As the hundreds of passengers disembarked to ing for.« Only at long last did he find someone who hadn’t been in America for more than a few weeks were roaring with laughter. They couldn’t believe it. the waiting area, the would-be ranch-hand waited recognized the name and could point him in the – geography was still a blur. He heard »St. Louis« One of them reached into his pocket for his wallet to meet his new employer. »But the hours went by right the direction. After asking to leave his suit- and he thought of jazz – he knew Armstrong’s »St. – he ended up advancing me my first week’s and the crowd got smaller and smaller. There was case at the desk, he crossed Woodward again Louis Blues«. Was the other architect just being wages so I would have a place to stay.« obviously no one looking for me. Everyone else and made his way on foot to Saarinen’s office. polite? He understood that he was asking him to My father started at Perkins & Will in January of connected with a relative or a sponsor. It was get- The man is a great believer in the idea that lives move to New Orleans. New Orleans! That that 1950, renting a boiler-room bed-space with a Lat- ting later and later, until finally I was alone, stand- are shaped by significant events – events that was just too far away, he thought. And he de- vian family in Chicago. He worked at the firm for ing on one side of the gate, unable to get through come to seem »meant« in the light of their out- clined the offer. Saarinen’s visitor was in fact Mi- 17 months, first as a draftsman, but very quickly because my rancher had not come for me. I didn’t comes. In his memories this whole epoch, with noru Yamasaki, then on the verge of a major ca- picking up bigger design responsibilities. He had know what would happen next.« The main fear its absent rancher, the renewed connection with reer breakthrough – and a few years later my fa- never imagined an office on such a scale – but it was that he would be denied entry, somehow Sylvia, and the first architectural contacts, is rich ther would be his chief designer. But that night his was the perfect place to learn the ropes. There he forced to go back to the point of departure. He with such a heightened sense of destiny. He gets focus was entirely on Saarinen. mingled for the first time with other young archi- felt his whole future at stake as he stood there in especially animated when he recounts the details The story is amusing on several levels, but it tects – Bob Jones, a young architect back from a the deserted docking area. But then suddenly he of this trip. takes on a great retrospective significance – al- European Fulbright took him under his wing – and was not alone any more. Someone had come to To begin with, he didn’t know then that Saari- most an ironic significance – once we look at the started learning the American architectural lingo. meet his ship – it was Sylvia. She had gotten his nen was a legendary night-owl. When he knocked larger trajectory of the career. The fact is that at He remembers his first apprenticeship vividly, letter; she had taken the train from Princeton and at the office door, he was greeted by the courtly that moment he was in the middle of the night, how quickly he had to scramble to translate what was there waving to him on the other side of the Willo von Moltke. Moltke, one of several Euro- negotiating with the two central figures of his ar- he had learned in Stuttgart into a non-metric gate. Gunnar was overjoyed. »The immigration of- peans at then at Saarinen’s office, was the unoffi- chitectural apprenticeship, two men who would framework, figuring out terms and specifications. ficial asked me if I knew this person.« He laughs. cial »man of protocol«, a host of sorts. He would teach him a great deal, but who would also help He would borrow working drawings and the »I said I did, yes. Then he checked his papers and have seen a young man with an accent and a him define through opposition his own vision and Sweets catalogue to study at night. Already he saw she was not the listed sponsor. Thank God portfolio under his arm. Eero, he said, was home style. was living the double-life of the profession, switch- it was a less regulated time. The man had been sleeping, as he only worked late at night. The Saarinen was in close contact with the princi- ing from office work to other projects on his waiting there with me. He wanted to go home, but young man should come back after midnight – pals at the firm of Perkins & Will in Chicago – they own. couldn’t as long as I was there. He overlooked at around three in the morning would be ideal. had collaborated on the design for the Crow Is- Impressed by his work ethic and his thorough that the designated contact had not arrived. In- He was deeply confused, but not by the thought land School. He thought there might be a job grounding in materials – the emphasis of the stead, he asked Sylvia if she could offer me a of the late hour. It was that he had assumed that there for the newcomer, but he also promised to Technische Hochschule curriculum – his supervi- place to stay and help me get set up. Sylvia re- here, as in Europe, architects worked where they make contact as soon as there was an opening in sors expanded his responsibilities, giving him the sponded that yes, she could. He quickly prepared lived. Moltke was disabusing him of one of his his firm. This was one of those headline moments design of the United States Post Office Substation the necessary forms, and as soon as she had guiding assumptions about architects. that determine so many things about a person’s on LaSalle Street. It was basically a re-modeling signed her name he opened the gate and waved Nowadays the whole business would seem un- career. Saarinen would prove true to his word, job, offered in what he recalls was a »show us me in. That was it – I was in America, starting my orthodox in the extreme, but the visitor wondered inviting my father back the following year, after his what you can do« spirit. They were obviously im- new life. I can’t imagine something like that hap- only how to pass the time. He walked a great apprenticeship at Perkins & Will. And four years pressed by the results, for soon after that he was pening today.« His last memory of the day is of the deal, looked around. He had gotten the address after that he would go to work for Yamasaki, who sent to nearby Rockford to work on the design two of them riding up 5th Avenue in a taxi on their of Saarinen’s home, which was in walking dis- by that time would have established his office in for the Rockford Memorial Hospital project. way to the train station, amazed at the Christmas tance, and he set off down Long Lake Road to nearby Birmingham. A great many things happened during what lights and the fantastic store displays. find it, then walked by for a slow inspection. What My father took Saarinen up on his offer to make was chronologically a very brief interval. For one He stayed with Sylvia and her parents in Prin- a shock! It seemed that the great designer, his the necessary contact in Chicago. He got on the thing, my father and mother were married in the ceton, New Jersey, for several days. »It was my hero, the apostle of the »next thing« lived in a clas- Greyhound bus the very next day and headed Princeton University Chapel on Christmas Day of first taste of America«, he reminisces. »Every sin- sic Georgian house. »This depressed me«, says for Chicago to present himself to Perkins & Will. 1950, with his old friend August serving as Best gle thing was new. The quiet wide streets, gas my father. »I didn’t know what to think. I saw this Everything was a first-time experience – the open Man. There was a whirlwind quality to the whole stations, and big stores with all of this merchan- place and my heart sank.« He had a similar expe- farmland of Michigan, the big refineries of Gary, In- event, which included the then almost-obligatory dise piled high on the shelves. These are clichés, rience later when he went to see Cranbrook, de- diana and the industrial sprawl of Chicago. It was honeymoon in Niagara Falls. Reality only set in af- but they’re no less true: how cheerful everyone signed by Eliel Saarinen (who was also the first here, decades before, that his father had for a ter, when they went to Chicago, Sylvia for the first seemed, how obliging. And the food! I would go director of the Art Academy). He expected some time practiced law. I have a Xerox of his business time. After a few days in the city they moved and to the drugstore counter and get a hamburger kind of progressive utopia, some vision of moder- card: Peter J. Birkert (sic), identifying himself as set up house in Rockford. After six months inten- and a milkshake, whatever I wanted.« nity, and found instead a tranquil retreat, with »Attorney and Counselor at Law«. My grandfather sive work on the hospital – they had scarcely He could scarcely take it all in. At the same eclectic academic buildings that harked back to had come to America to study at Valparaiso and arranged their few belongings – the long awaited time, he was getting restless, eager to get started English public schools as well as to Eliel’s Finnish Columbia, and for a time had a law practice on call came. »It was Eero – he said ›come now‹.« with his new life. He had been dreaming his archi- romanticism. So far nothing was as he had imag- Chicago’s LaSalle Street. His son would have Gunnar understood that this summons marked tectural future ever since Stuttgart, carrying it in ined. passed right by on his way to his first job. the real beginning of his architectural career. his thoughts as the ship made its way across the To say that my father was living his life on a »There was no question in my mind«, he says. ocean. Finally, right after New Year’s, taking just He returned to the Saarinen office in the middle shoestring at this point would be a drastic under- »This was what I had been waiting for.« his suitcase and twenty dollars he had borrowed, of the night – a dramatic enough staging for what statement. He had used the last of his money to The young couple had to move again, this time he boarded a Greyhound bus. In that suitcase he he sees as one of the fated moments of his early buy his bus ticket, and when he got to Chicago he to an apartment in Pontiac, Michigan. Saarinen’s had a letter for Eero Saarinen from Gutbrod, and career. When he arrived he found Saarinen in con- had to ask to store his few things at the YMCA office was just down the road in an old school- his project portfolio. He was on his way to Bloom- versation with a Japanese man. But Saarinen while he went to see about employment. His mar- house on Long Lake Road in Bloomfield Hills. My field Hills to present himself to Saarinen. turned to welcome his visitor. He looked over the gin of safety was nonexistent. But he had good father’s professional beginning coincided with the

14 15 beginning of a family as well. Sylvia was pregnant, holding the urn filled with Eliel’s ashes. Then he 16. Gunnar Birkerts, collapsible cart for Cantu by the architect’s slow and thoughtful responses, counterpoint, offering a very different energy and and I was born in September, not long after their was mortified, but now he can laugh. »It was«, international furniture design competition. the man finally burst out: »Mr. Saarinen, I wonder approach to design, and he is, no question, the arrival. he says, »the closest I ever got to the master.« 17. Sven Birkert’s adjustable chair. if you could speak a little faster?« Whereupon, so vital next step after Saarinen. But these years – 18. Pope chair. Ergonomic design overtones. the story goes, Saarinen pulled out his pipe, slow- 1956 to 1960 – are seen less as a baptism than Of course I don’t remember much from these ear- The Saarinen office in those years was a hothouse 19. Eero Saarinen, War Memorial Center, Milwau- ly filled it, tapped the tobacco, fussed with his as a stage preceding independence. liest years, though certain later images survive environment for young architects who were look- kee, Wisconsin. matches, and only then, when he had exhaled the What is interesting, but hardly ever mentioned, from the Pontiac years. How much is preserved ing for the next new thing. In the four years he 20. Minoru Yamasaki Reynolds Metals Building, first smoke, replied – slowly – »No, but I could say is the fact that after leaving the Saarinen office in memory, and how much is a composite from lat- was a designer at Saarinen’s, my father worked Southfield, Michigan. less.« Years later I sent the anecdote to the Read- 1955, we moved to Milwaukee, where my father er? I can’t be sure. I do hold onto a certain atmos- alongside Dinkeloo, Robert Venturi, Spero Daltas, er’s Digest – it was my first published writing. set himself up in partnership with architect Don pheric impression. I recall my parents sitting to- Charles Bassett, Charles Eames, Kevin Roche, My father spent his years at Saarinen’s doing Grieb. It was in some ways a logical next step, for gether at the end of the day, enjoying their ritual of Olav Hammerstrom, Anthony Lumsden, Glen his part, taking great inspiration and instruction he had worked extensively on the War Memorial cocktails and conversation, each debriefing the Paulsen, Cesar Pelli, and Mark Jaroszewicz, and from his persistence and his insistence on innova- Building while at Saarinen’s office and already had other on events and encounters. For years, so it on and on – a strikingly international mix of tal- tive excellence, but also, as time went on, chafing many contacts in the city. Taking up Grieb’s part- seems now, I heard the mysterious »Eero« sound ents. Out of that group Bassett and Paulsen against a process that was diametrically opposed nership offer was an early attempt at breakaway woven through the evening report. »Eero ... Ee- would become long-term friends. Of course, in to what would become his own mode of concept- independence, but the relationship was dissolved ro ... « I must have been two or three. I associate those years they were all still young men getting generation – intuitive, unconscious, seeing the after just one year. Maybe in keeping with his poli- the strange word with the feeling of those times – their first start, hardly well-known figures. But the emerging solution as a kind of embryo concept cy of not dwelling on mis-steps and mistakes, he conversations involving Eero were always very atmosphere was energized. There was much talk ready for growth and elaboration. does not make much place for this trial in his ac- serious. Beyond that, I never paid much atten- of politics, many parties – some boisterous – to Of course, the larger flowering of that method- count of things, except to say that Yamasaki got tion. But I was aware a few years later when it celebrate commissions and awards. This was the ology was still some years in the future. But the wind of the fact that the Midwest scene did not changed, becoming »Yama ... Yama ...« period of the MIT Dome, the Columbus Bank, young architect was already starting to find chan- seem to be suited to Gunnar’s talents and ambi- There were other memories – real or imagined Concordia College, and the General Motors Tech nels for the creative impulses that office projects tions, and that he wooed him to join his Birming- or suggested by stories I heard. I have an image Center – he had different assignments on all of couldn’t quite accommodate. One of these was ham office as Senior Designer. Yamasaki was at of my father’s drafting table in our apartment al- these projects. furniture design, which for a time became a major this point breaking with the Miesian orthodoxy and ways called »Terraces«, how when I was very after-hours preoccupation. was very interested in developing metal technolo- small he would set me down on that great ex- It’s hard to imagine a more stimulating course of Even in his Stuttgart years my father had occa- gy along the lines of what Saarinen had been do- panse (though I can’t believe he was changing my instruction for a young architect – the jobs and his sionally tried his hand at entering furniture compe- ing at the General Motors Tech Center. He had a diaper). And I have impressions of him sitting at colleagues had him stretching in all directions. My titions, submitting designs for the Museum of chance to showcase his new interest in the de- that table for many hours at night – the intensity of father remembers that there was a steady stream Modern Art’s furniture design competition in the sign for the headquarters for the Reynolds Metals the light from the architect’s lamp – though logic of visitors through the office. Not only was it al- late 1940s.. His work was noticed. And in 1955, company in Detroit. He wanted my father on his says I would have been sleeping. most a mandatory stop for all the Fulbright schol- when he was at Saarinen’s, he entered the First team because he recognized that along with tal- Things were now very different for the young ars from Europe, but on any given day Buckmin- International Furniture Competition at Cantu, ent came the know-how acquired at the Saarinen architect. On every front. If Perkins & Will had ster Fuller, Kenzo Tange, Charles Eames, or Paul where he was awarded a 1st prize for his design office. been a large firm made up almost exclusively of Rudolph might stop in for a look around. There is of a collapsible serving cart, as well as folding Though Gunnar had first met Yamasaki in the young American architects – at least that was his no question that the Saarinen office was the epi- chairs and tables. What made the honor especial- middle of the night in Eero’s office, the two in- memory – Saarinen’s office had a much more in- center of modern architecture during these years. ly gratifying was the fact that it had been judged creasingly eminent architects had since grown ternational profile – German, Polish, Australian, But as the shock of the new gradually wore by Gio Ponti, Sven Markelius and Alvar Aalto. apart, to the point where they no longer talked. In Japanese ... But for all that, my father’s main im- off, as the excitement was absorbed by the Though models of the pieces were built in Italy, fact, now that they were both in the area and of- pression was of a bastion of crew-cut conformity. steady repetitions of office life, my father also they were never produced. During this period, he ten in competition for the same jobs, the offices »Everyone looked the same back then«, he says. found that Saarinen’s way of approaching design also came up with prize-winning concepts for a were more or less sealed from each other. This »Grey flannel suit, button-down shirt, striped tie ... problems, his way of thinking about design, was chair, a desk, and an adjustable child’s chair. The development came in the wake of the contentious Remember, these were all Ivy League grads, and not his. Saarinen – working in the office – followed prototype of this last was a key prop of my London Embassy competition – which was ulti- this was the uniform. I went the other way. I a highly refined process of idea selection and elim- younger years, and I have vivid memories of mov- mately awarded to Saarinen. »Competition« is an bought myself a blue flannel suit.« The tendency, ination. This played out in several ways. There is ing the platform from level to level as I grew. He accurate designation. to look different, to be different, never changed. the well-known story of the Saarinen chair con- was later asked by Baker Furniture of Grand We moved back to the Detroit area, to Birming- I rejected it in my younger years. Desperate to be cept, where the architect more or less proclaimed: Rapids to create designs for a line of desks and ham, in 1956, where for the next four years the ar- seen as an average American, one of the group, »There have been four-legged chairs, and three- tables for office use (at the time the company was chitect would absorb the more overtly creative ap- I resented my father’s tendency to go against the legged chairs, and two-legged chairs. But the having great success marketing the contemporary proach of the Yamasaki office. These were dy- current. Think of it – other fathers had flat-tops, one-legged chair has not been done. We’ll design residential furniture of Finn Juhl). That project nev- namic years for the Japanese designer. He had my father had (for then) longish hair. Other fami- a one-legged chair.« He ended up creating a line er came to market. My father stopped designing become a kind of »folk hero«, written up with cov- lies drove American cars – we had to have im- of one-legged chairs and tables for Knoll Furni- furniture after he left Saarinen’s office, but then, in er stories in Time and Life, which in those days ports. My childhood world saw the psychology ture. The point was that he needed to create the the 1980s, his inventiveness would be challenged amounted to a popular canonization. The office of the blue suit played out in every part of daily conditions – the challenges – that would stimulate by a commission from the Detroit Archdiocese to was then working on major design projects for life. his best creative thinking. Nothing excited him create altar furniture for Pope Paul II’s visit. Wayne State University, the Dahran Airport in Sau- more than the idea of the untried. di Arabia, and the World Trade Center. The Saarinen firm was now Eero’s alone. Eliel had Where building-design was concerned, Saari- It’s hard for me as my father’s son and direct wit- In the new firm, my father’s professional profile died a short while back, though he remained a nen asked his staff to generate what felt like end- ness to square the more objective chronologies began to change. During his tenure at Saarinen’s presence – very literally, in fact. My father remem- less (and sometimes unnecessarily obvious) solu- and descriptions with what I remember, and, more office, he had kept a deliberately quiet profile, bers his first day in the Saarinen office. There was tions. For every part of every project, he would important, what has come down through the watching and absorbing, not looking to push for a meeting and working drawings were being survey all of the available possibilities and then years as the family mythology, the larger thematic attention in what has been described as »a stable spread out on the conference table. The newcom- pick what he thought was the best. Over and narrative. I want to trust this latter version, of of thoroughbreds«. But now, older, with more ex- er was, of course, nervous; he didn’t see the over, refining, narrowing down, generating new course, not absolutely, but as a way of getting at perience behind him, and a more responsible po- winks going around the room. When his new col- variations from the best concept and then select- the psychological importance that my father has sition, he became a more assertive and visible league, John Dinkeloo, signaled to him, he hurried ing from those. It was a kind of applied natural se- granted to different phases and events. The story presence. For one thing, Yamasaki often delegat- to oblige. »You, young guy«, said Dinkeloo, »hand lection, a formalized survival of the fittest, the kind of arrival and the early Saarinen years, for in- ed him to meet with editors and members of the me that.« He was pointing to the mantle. My fa- of rapid-fire filtering that is nowadays accom- stance, have always loomed large in this mytholo- architectural press, in this way initiating relation- ther reached for what looked like a vase. There plished through computer imaging. gy, probably because they correspond to the first ships that would stand him in good stead over the was a silence around the table. Dinkeloo looked Saarinen was in many ways a deliberator. A expression of ambition and desire; they represent years. Some of these same editors would soon at him without cracking an expression. »We’ll let favorite anecdote in our house – a true account – the laying down of the career foundation. The Ya- enough be there to herald his emergence, helping Pappi hold the drawing«, he said at last. Another told of Saarinen being questioned on TV by a masaki years, while obviously still important, figure to create the »buzz« that is so essential to further silence. Only then did it dawn on him: he was high-strung interviewer. Increasingly exasperated less in his reminiscences. Yamasaki is there as a commissions.

16 17 But for the time being he was still a young ar- way. He refused point-blank, thus offending Ya- 21, 22. Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy. his work for Saarinen and Yamasaki, as well as his The intuitive/synthetic breakthrough was still chitect learning his ropes, trying to accommodate masaki, who then would not speak to him for a 23. Gunnar Birkerts with his MG racer. success in important competitions, my father was some years in the future. At this point, through the himself to Yamasaki’s more volatile approach. He long time. 24. Gunnar Birkerts with a student at the University named a Visiting Professor at the University of 1960s and into the 1970s, he was still working found himself somewhat disillusioned. He had lis- Hearing the story, I was not surprised. Either by of Oklahoma. Michigan School of Architecture – just the begin- with versions of what he calls (and taught) as the tened carefully – and approvingly – when Yamasa- the assertion of independence, or principle, or by 25. Gunnar Birkerts in conversation with Bruno Zevi ning of a decades’ long affiliation, which would 1-2-3 approach, using drawing and reactive re- ki had said he wanted to break out of the Miesian the brashness of this action. It has, along with im- in the American Academy in Rome. see him promoted through the various levels to full sponse to generate ideas and refinements. The »box«, but more and more it was clear he did not patience and a quick temper, always been a part professorship and, much later, the first Thomas S. hand draws, the eye sees and evaluates, and then so much want to break out as cover it with a dec- of the man’s character, but it was especially pro- Monaghan Distinguished Professor, and finally, in coaches the hand to make corrections and ad- orative ornament. Yamasaki had discovered pre- nounced when he was younger. If the tendencies 1990, Professor Emeritus. There was a stint at the justments – a process that can be repeated until a cast high-density concrete – »shock beton« – eased over the years, they did not die out. Cer- American Academy in Rome – which he still views solution emerges. The embryonic sketches that which allowed the creation of small parts. Yama tainly they surface in what I think of as the »Philip as a great period of personal renaissance. He was became so important after the mid-1970s did nor got carried away, started in a new direction. The Johnson story«, which dates from a much more also invited on two separate occasions to teach exist yet. Design was still significantly a matter of project of breaking the Miesian box was not work- recent time. As my father tells it, he and Johnson, in residence, in one case as the first Plym Distin- making a drawing, responding to it, and then mo- ing out. His young Senior Designer had a harder who were aesthetically deeply at odds over the guished Professor at the University of Illinois, and difying as needed. Over and over. The process and harder time making peace with the architect’s issue of Postmodernism, met once – and only later as the first Goff Professor at the University of was generative, but not as intuitive as what would design ethos. once – for lunch. The talk at some point turned Oklahoma – in both cases he inaugurated these come later. If he was not achieving complete fulfillment of to the question of metaphor, and Johnson, exas- professorships. He looks back on both residen- Even with this approach, which he now sees his own growing creative urges on the jobs them- perated over something, said: »What do you cies as periods of creative rejuvenation. as necessary for that stage of his evolution, but selves, he began to find other outlets outside the mean meta-phor? What is metaphor?« To which In the early years, he drove to Ann Arbor two limited in its ultimate reach, my father was getting office. This was the period when he bought an the younger man replied, once again burning his days a week to teach his class, always leaving a good deal of attention in the architectural press MGA and to race in local rallies and gymkhanas. bridges: »If I say ›you look like hell‹ that’s meta- time for his ritual of swimming laps in the univer- for his bold design solutions. The Schwartz resi- But there was another, more important outlet for phor!« In fact it’s simile, not metaphor, but I think sity pool. Family visits became more frequent in dence, for instance, received multiple awards his energies (and frustrations) . He not only contin- Johnson got the point. 1963 when he was given the commission to de- (from Architectural Record, and the AIA, among ued work on his furniture design, but with his col- sign the University Reformed Church. Then we many others) and the Royal Oak Bank and the leagues Astra Zarina and Doug Haner, he worked Looking over a biographical chronology of the made regular Sunday pilgrimages, my sister University Reformed Church were also honored. on the international competition for the Cultural career, I am surprised to see that the Birkerts & and I still waiting for long periods in the back But the most important recognition – at least Center in the Belgian Congo. The three collaborat- Straub partnership, established in 1960, was ter- seat, but now looking forward to a lunch at Do- from the vantage of retrospect – was conferred in ed very smoothly and the team was awarded a minated just two years later, making way for Gun- minick’s, a Greek restaurant over by the architec- 1964 by Progressive Architecture magazine and Third Prize in this highly competitive run-off. nar Birkerts & Associates. Birkerts & Straub fig- ture school. its editor John Dixon. I have a Xerox of the an- The association with Latvian-born Zarina (he ures much more significantly in my recall. This, I’m For whatever reason, he did not discuss his nouncement, which reads, in part: »Next month, had not known her before coming to Yamasaki’s sure, has to do with my own moving into aware- teaching life often – and I was sometimes sur- for the first time within recent memory, Progres- office) had a large long-term importance in my fa- ness, becoming alert to events in the larger life of prised to remember that he kept up this parallel sive Architecture will devote a substantial part of ther’s life. A few years later, after winning the pres- the family. Certainly it was a matter of daily discus- vocation. My sense is that while he enjoyed the an issue to the personal and professional biogra- tigious Rome Prize, Zarina decided to establish sion at the dinner table. There was a general air of actual in-class work (remember that his mother phy of one man.« An extraordinary singling-out of herself in Italy. There she »discovered« the hilltop excitement, a sense of risks being taken, of ad- was a revered teacher in Riga for fifty years), he an architect not yet forty: to have a leading journal village Civita di Bagnoregio, in north of Rome, venture. Here was our father starting his own felt removed from academic culture. He did not go of the profession, one read by all architects, put and persuaded a small group of friends, my father business, having his own office. The small upstairs to faculty meetings, and took no role in depart- the spotlight on his emerging career. The charac- among them, to buy and restore houses there. space in a Birmingham building (within a mile or mental affairs. He made it clear that he was there terizing adjectives were strong, and in many ways After the mid-1970s, »Civita« would figure very im- so of Yamasaki) is still vivid to me more than forty as a practitioner. At various points, I remember, his defining. The designer was called »an experi- portantly for him as a place of rescue and replen- years later, the stairs, the smells, the drafting ta- detached style gave rise to grumbling among his menter«, a »maverick, even something of a ishment, but also as a site of artistic inspiration. bles and the area where models were built. My teaching colleagues – as well it might have – and heretic«, a man »whose ideas definitely do not run sister Andra (who is three years younger than me) he would report this with a certain satisfaction. He in the main channels of architectural thinking«. At that time, though, Michigan was still the practi- and I would go along with him on weekends, and took it as evidence of the special status of those These were, no question, heady times. I was es- cal center of things. The architect, at Yamasaki’s Dad would let us pick a few things from the small teachers who also »do«. Nevertheless, he was of- pecially pleased to connect the word »maverick« office, was moving into what might be called a supply room while he attended to his business. ten invited to lecture at colleges and universities with the popular TV show of the same name. That transitional phase. The customary moonlighting There were hard 4-H pencils in tin boxes and around the country, and was regarded as a popu- felt like real praise. work of competitions continued (with Zarina and tablets of yellow legal paper. We both felt proud lar teacher at Michigan. In 1971 the National Stu- Haner he also entered the international competi- and proprietary. And then there were the ceremo- dent Organization honored him with its Tau Sigma Though obviously no life breaks neatly into chap- tion for Ankara Technical University in 1959), but nial occasions when the office got a new client. Delta gold medal. ters – there are always overlaps and continuities – as he emerged into greater visibility he also began On those nights he would come in from the But there was a deeper, more important ten- the architect’s career does seem to follow a cer- to be approached independently by clients. There garage with a bag from Howard Johnson’s. Ice sion, which grew more pronounced in later years, tain large scale pattern. His time of apprenticeship was Ed Haley, our one-time neighbor, who wanted cream. This ritual went on for some years. We especially during the heyday of Postmodernism in and growing independence was clearly bounded my father to design his new funeral home. And commemorated the Schwartz commission, and the 1980s and early 1990s. This architect has nev- by the years with Saarinen and Yamasaki; he Detroit-area financier Alan Schwartz was interest- the Lafayette East apartments, and later the er been a theoretician or intellectualizer. Though broke into his own with the founding of Birkerts ed in having him design a summer residence. Marathon Oil office building and the Lillibridge he devours architectural journals with single-mind- & Straub. And though that partnership lasted for Contacts proliferated. There was a major overture School addition, and the Savings and Loan Bank ed zeal and knows both the history and the cur- only two years, the momentum was carried on, from local developer Morton Skolnick – he was in Royal Oak. rent scene with a practitioner’s grasp of detail, he with Gunnar Birkerts & Associates, through a se- looking to build Lafayette Tower, a large-scale ur- These were all area commissions, and while we does not have an interest – or belief in – theory. At ries of increasingly visible buildings in the Detroit ban apartment building, his first high-rise. loved the treats, and the sense that good things one level, he sees it as the revenge of the frustrat- area and the Midwest. The phase of emergence The times seemed auspicious for another try were happening, that the new business was doing ed, those who can only build in their heads; he culminated when the firm received the commis- at independence. With Haley, Schwartz, and Skol- well, we were less excited by another ritual – the deems it pretentious, impractical, and a dead- sion for the design of the Federal Reserve Bank in nick as clients, or potential clients, my father and Sunday drive. These expeditions were undertaken end. In his decades of teaching, he was resolutely Minneapolis in 1967. That project then announced Frank Straub, another principal from the Yama- casually, usually with assurances that we would hands-on, teaching skills – the practicum – and a higher profile and a new range of important saki office, left to establish the firm of Birkerts & just take a short spin, but they always ended up then later, as his own approach to design commissions followed. An invitation to be Archi- Straub, Architects. It was not in all respects a with my sister and me bored in the backseat of changed, after he discovered the power of the in- tect in Residence at the American Academy in smooth departure. The architect recalls announc- the car, trying to amuse ourselves while my moth- tuitive subconscious, process. His mission was to Rome in the Spring of 1976 accelerated an ing his decision to leave over lunch with his boss. er read in the front seat and the architect paced teach his students how to think like architects, emerging shift in his design process and led to a Yamasaki claimed to understand, but he wanted out or inspected the site – of Lillibridge, of the or- how to build up a reservoir of content, and then deep reconsideration of form. to keep some architectural contact. He offered to chard in Northville ... how to begin tapping it to discover the best ap- But before the Federal Reserve Bank and the help by sending along possible clients, but his This period also introduced Ann Arbor into our propriate solutions to the problems imposed by Academy – before this reconsideration could take head designer was dead set on making his own geographical picture. In 1959, on the strength of the commission. place – were years of growth and consolidation.

18 19 Projects during this period include, after the La- that followed a distinctively urban scheme. A li- names on that list were widely known: I. M. Pei, al press was by and large captivated by the inno- fayette East apartments, the Lillibridge School ad- brary and two dormitories were ultimately built, Aldo Giurgola, Harry Weese, and Ben Thompson. vations, and the building was widely publicized. dition, the Marathon Oil Building, the University but the overall plan became a casualty of chang- The other firm was Gunnar Birkerts & Associates, But it also had its critics, New York Times writer Reformed Church in Ann Arbor, the South Wing of ing social conditions, mainly the large-scale move- which at that point was a very small, six-person Paul Goldberger among them. This was, remem- the Detroit Arts Institute, and the Fisher Adminis- ment of black students into integrated state office. ber, the era of the counter-culture, when big was trative Center at the University of Detroit. schools in the mid-1960s. When Galusha and his group came to Birming- bad and all government initiatives were regarded The pattern of local focus was broken with the The Irwin Miller connection underscores the ham for an on-site interview, my father was wor- with suspicion. All monumentality, whatever its commission for the Lincoln Elementary School in vital importance of the progressive-minded client ried. »We didn’t have the office presence«, he purpose, was for the Establishment and against Columbus, Indiana, sometimes called »the town in this architect’s career. »Irwin Miller had a pas- says. »I thought the best thing would be to drive the people. that architecture made famous« or »the Athens of sion for architecture«, he recalls, »he believed in out to Ann Arbor where the University Reformed The years that Gunnar Birkerts & Associates the prairie«. This project arrived by the special invi- aesthetic value and saw the architect as an artist. Church was under construction. But unfortunately worked on the bank were years of great growth – tation of Irvin Miller, well-known CEO of the Cum- That was exciting. And where there is a dynamic it was winter and when we got there things looked the office expanded to 35, the largest it had ever mins Engine Corporation. Miller had the idealistic like that, where relations are good, it helps the de- pretty uninspiring. The poured concrete forms been. The architect had become a very busy man, ambition of turning his company town into a de- sign process. Ideas come better when there is a were discolored by the application of pre-heated designing, teaching, giving lectures, and presiding sign Mecca, for the sake of beauty, but also as a sense of welcome.« additives. This was not the image of the building over the new projects that started coming in. In way of fostering an educated community culture I was hoping to present. I saw this at a glance. that period the office worked on the IBM Corpo- that would in time become a resource for the en- The next, very important architect-client collabo- There was no point in pretending otherwise. So rate Center and the Houston Contemporary Arts lightened corporation he sought. To this end he in- ration began a short time later when he was con- I was open with Hugh – I explained the situation. Museum – both very sleek, »minimalist« buildings– vited a number of the country’s leading architects tacted by Hugh Galusha, the ambitious and pro- At the same time I was sure that we wouldn’t be the Dance Instructional Facility in Purchase, New – including Cesar Pelli, Kevin Roche, Richard Mei- gressive-minded President of the Federal Reserve getting the job.« York, and then, soon after, the University of Michi- er, and I. M. Pei – to design buildings in the city. Bank in Minneapolis. Here my father found not He was wrong. Not long after, Galusha called gan Law School addition, the IBM office building Miller knew my father from the Saarinen years, just what proved to be a meeting of the minds, to tell him that Gunnar Birkerts & Associates in Southfield, Michigan, and the Duluth Public Li- when he had done a major part of the interior de- but, as time went on, a genuine friendship. But would be doing the bank design. He was over- brary. Gunnar Birkerts & Asssociates was in the sign development for the Union Bank & Trust Com- first, of course, they had to take each other’s joyed, but also mystified. It was not until years lat- limelight, with very gratifying attention from the pany. Still, for Miller to have bet on Gunnar Birkerts measure and go through the stages of establish- er, when they had become friends, that Galusha press: many of the buildings not only received im- & Associates, by any standard still a young firm, ing trust. talked about that afternoon. He confided then portant awards, but were given cover exposure in shows how their reputation was growing. The deep understanding between architect and how impressed he had been by the straightfor- the major architectural journals. Columbus would prove good to my father over client is a key determinant of the eventual success wardness, by the would-be architect’s frank ad- Interestingly, the leap to intuitive design – and the years – he calls it, along with Corning, New or failure of any project, but as this architect has mission of concern about the presentability of the the corresponding move to a more organic con- York, his »favorite city«, at least in terms of hospi- learned over his long career, the more artistic or Reformed Church; he said that he found in their ception of appropriate solution – had not yet an- tality to his design. The Lincoln School project re- venturesome the design, the more vital it is that conversations an honesty and willingness of admit nounced itself. As my father put it recently, »I later quired him to synthesize a complex set of con- there be a shared vision. The convergence does a mistake, qualities that he admired greatly. It was went back through my papers to see if there was straints relating to placement, energy conserva- not usually happen on its own. It requires the ar- enough to make the difference. any kind of conceptual sketch of the Fed. I was tion, and handicapped services. He worked close- chitect, especially in the first contacts, to use all of For my father to have given up hope at that shocked. There was nothing. The same with Lin- ly with people in the community. »There were no his intuitive faculties, working as psychologist and moment is unusual. It goes against his basic pro- coln – nothing!« And this is from a man who saves heroics«, he recalls, »no acting like the master.« salesman, coaching the client (who is often initially file, which follows certain precepts. As he has of- all of the evidence, who archived (and eventually The relationships were respectful and engaged, conservative – fiscally and artistically) to see the ten said, he believes »what’s done is done; forget donated to the Bentley Historical Library at the and paved the way for other jobs. The Lincoln project in fresh ways, overcoming resistances the bad, the unpleasant; always look ahead.« He University of Michigan as well as the Latvian Na- project was followed later by an invitation, not while creating assurances. is a self-styled proponent of the power of opti- tional Library) the thousands and thousands of from Miller but from another group, to design St. For years I listened as my father debriefed my mism. I remember once when we were talking sketches that would come. But they hadn’t come Peter’s Lutheran Church. And when the time mother at the end of the day, going over the blow- about flying – I was confessing my anxieties about just yet. As daring and innovative as the designs came to expand the Lincoln School with its finite by-blow account of important meetings, often hurtling through space – he said that he never of this period were, they were still significantly the geometry, no architect search was attempted. In talking in terms of his feelings and intuitions, de- gives it a second thought. Whenever a flight gets products of the conventional process, with ideas Corning, the design for the Museum of Glass had tailing how he picked up degrees of receptivity or bumpy, he explained, when he feels people generated through the 1-2-3 – brain, hand, eye – captured the imagination of the community, and obstruction during the course of a presentation, around him getting jittery, he makes it a point to method. The architect was still building momen- working relations with the city had been so how a certain important member of the board had put everything out of his mind, to concentrate on tum for the leap which, when it came, was sur- smooth, that the relationship was renewed with to be brought around. The trick, he always said, sending positive thoughts to the pilot’s cabin. By prising and transforming. the separate commission to design the Municipal was not to try to strong-arm the individual, but to the same token, he has said more than once that The mid-1970s brought a major new phase in Fire Station. seduce him, bring him around by degrees, edu- the best way to go (were it not for the fates of the my father’s life and architecture, a phase marked Irwin Miller was impressed with the final design cating him in stages until he actually saw that his others involved) would be mid-flight, at 600 miles by a surge of creative inspiration. The geometric/ for the Lincoln Elementary School, its careful use own thinking was present in the concept propos- an hour, 30,000 feet – instantly. orthogonal approach now gave way to a very dif- of space, its subtle landscaping, and overall inno- al. As a result of this meeting of minds – his and ferent search for solution, and as this happened vative matching of design to practical uses. A man Presentations have always been emotionally- Galusha’s – he found himself arrived at a whole the design process itself seemed to change. with many connections and much influence, he charged ordeals for him. He has stopped short of new architectural echelon. The Federal Reserve Mainly, he found that he was trusting his intuition became instrumental in getting Gunnar Birkerts & claiming that he could actually read the auras of Bank was by far the biggest commission of his much more than he had before, allowing the sub- Associates its next large-scale commission. This the people in the room. But he often tells about career; it was a highly visible building that would, conscious mind to absorb the constraints of the was for the Tougaloo College master plan in tuning into the body language – how a person not surprisingly, make him a highly visible architect project and help shape the design. He began to Tougaloo, Mississippi. The college was founded holds himself or shakes hands – as well as to the not only in America, but in Europe and Japan as speak in terms of an »embryonic synthesis«, a out of a strong Civil-Rights-era initiative to create nuances of eye-contact; not surprisingly, he usual- well. The notoriety – the »buzz« – escalated be- visual intuition which even in its first sketchy ver- forward-looking education for black students in ly claims he was confirmed in his intuitions after yond all expectation when the design was submit- sions could be seen to contain the DNA of the the South. As a committed social activist, Miller the fact. ted and accepted. The mammoth structure would final design. This suggests that the visual intelli- had a strong interest in the project. »Those were One surprise that did come his way, though be built according to the principles of the suspen- gence was more confident of the correspon- very intense times«, my father recalls. »School in- through a different kind of mis-reading, was at the sion bridge, with the offices in effect suspended dences between form and function, and more will- tegration created a lot of unrest in the South. We hands of Hugh Galusha, who would become not from huge catenary cables. Aside from its revolu- ing to think expressively right from the threshold. architects were seen as part of the reform, and we just an important client but also a trusted friend. tionary structure and its visual elegance – the What he discovered and confirmed was that con- were often challenged. Though we were not Free- Galusha had a strong mandate. The Federal Re- great sweep of the cables was exhilarating – the cepts which emerged from this subconscious dom Marchers, our presence in the company of serve was looking to change its public face, to de- concept also satisfied the original mandate. The process were very often also logistically informed black faculty brought out a certain public aggres- emphasize the »fortress« character of its big insti- storage vaults were relegated to the underground, – that he could »check the math« and find that sion.« tutional buildings. Galusha had asked Ellis Kaplan, while the people were raised up off the ground, they worked. Hand in hand with this shift came Full implementation of the Tougaloo design an architect friend of his, to draw up a list of the into the light. It was a full-scale separation of the the architect’s expanded notion of metaphor, the would have offered a large-scale modular solution five best contemporary architects. Four of the Fed’s human and material wealth. The architectur- arresting thematic signature that put a new spin

20 21 on his long-held ideas about architecture as ap- be police at the house, looking for clues. But no, the client it can change everything, forcing a fresh tion of the Corning Museum, which had emerged propriate solution. His intuitive synthesizing we got home and there was nothing. I went to the synthesis. When I ask him to explain the role of with all ten-digits intact from the embryo sketch seemed to work readily with symbol and analogy, office, expecting to find everyone biting their nails. the architect in the process, he offers a concrete and inventively merged the practical program as if these were part of the collective inheritance. They barely looked up from their drafting boards. illustration to make his point. »Think of a design needs with the metaphoric possibilities inherent in It is hard to account for a change so major and ›Hello, Gunnar‹ ...« competition«, he says. »You have ten invited archi- the properties of glass. Built to display glass art- decisive. I think of the documented transforma- His real mid-life transition, his bid for a fresh de- tects synthesizing the same variables of a given works, it aspired to be its own kind of glass art- tions in the work of artists and composers, shifts parture, happened on paper. It was first signaled project, and without fail they arrive at ten different work, making inventive use of faceting, reflectivity, so striking as to become tag-identifications, like in his design for the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki, Fin- answers.« The reason? Each architect assigns a and a tension between the non-linear (though not Picasso’s »blue period«. Often these take place in land (the building was never finally built). Here he different relative value to the input, one stressing quite molten) shape and the fundamental linearity later life and represent a full commitment to the expressed most fully his long-standing admiration locale, another focusing on lighting requirements. of facet lines. premises that underlay earlier explorations of form for Alvar Aalto. This was the one master he had The training and philosophy of the designer is a The Academy interlude was retrospectively im- and content. Change is not surprising, but dra- accepted unconditionally, and who even now he major factor – but over and above everything else portant for another reason – this was my father’s matic change is. In my father’s case, where the calls his guiding light. »When I am in search of in- is the influence of strong personal expression. »Ar- first meeting with the Italian architecture critic arc of development was so compressed, it’s spiration«, he says, »I often say to myself, I won- chitecture at the highest level is an expressive art Bruno Zevi, who came to hear his lecture presen- tempting to search for factors and influences. der what Aalto would have done?« One of the first – there’s no getting around it.« tation and initiated a contact that would last until Though I’m well aware that this is mainly guess- trips out of the country that my father and mother His design process for the Helsinki Embassy Zevi died in January of 2000. Zevi was a power- work, I would offer the following. First, there is the took together, back in the early 1960s, was to Fin- (1975) was a strong outward sign of the new ap- ful force in European – and international – archi- time of life – his age – combining with the momen- land – it was an architectural pilgrimage. He need- proach. But the direction and acceleration of the tecture, combining a fierce polemical style with a tum of his own architectural development. I mean, ed the connection. »Everyone in America accept- transformation were determined by another set of zealous conviction about the mission of Mod- the man had worked intensely since the early ed the other great masters – Mies, Wright, influences. The first was a new client, Tom Buech- ernism, which was increasingly toward Organi- 1960s on innovative, boundary-testing concep- Gropius and Corbu – but they hadn’t found their ner, who would be another of the instigating fig- cism. Their meeting was a vital, and creatively tions while still working with the basic orthogonal way to Aalto.« The devotion has not really dimin- ures in his creative life. From Buechner came the timely, convergence of sensibilities, for it was also rule-book. After so many years he found himself ished over time. Indeed, his library shelves have commission for the Corning Museum of Glass. just in this period that Postmodernism was gain- looking to new challenges; he felt his method more books about this man’s work than any other. This was the rarest client, the most compelling ing ascendancy in the architecture world (and in changing, his reach extending. Certainly the struc- The U.S. Embassy project was a return to a fa- project. Buechner, himself a painter and a con- the culture in general), and decisive splits and al- tural adventurousness of the Federal Reserve miliar landscape and atmosphere. With this pro- noisseur of the arts, gave the gift of license: he liances were taking place on all sides. Zevi saw an Bank suggests a determined push against the ject we see the first of the conceptual sketches, wanted an original, a showpiece building. The ally, an American architect who rejected the post- norms. As does the 1969 design, the second, for the densely drawn emblems that contain all of the pitch could not have come at a better point in my modern pastiche of modes, the imposition of styl- the Corning Public Library, which shows clearly – ingredients of the final plan. What is remarkable is father’s career. For at this same time the American istic tags from the outside, and who kept faith with metaphorically – the impulse to go against the that these visual embryos, while synthesizing all of Academy offered him a 6-month Architect in Resi- his Modernist origins, even as he changed his symmetry of the perfect circle, to crack the shell the requirements of the building-to-be, arrive not dence position. It would prove to be one of the process and moved in his design toward an Or- and hatch something new. The original proposal through rational superimposition, but from within, most creative and spiritually-enriching periods in ganicism of the sort Zevi admired – not of flowing had the structure serving as a literal bridge over via intuitive expression – inspiration. They testify his life, a personal renaissance he would forever lines, necessarily, but involving a rejection of right the Chemung River. It was the first time Birkerts that the unconscious mind has been processing after associate with all things Italian. Rome al- angles and symmetry. had segmented the line, going against the linear the necessary elements, combining and recom- lowed him the breakthrough design of the Corning Gunnar has expressed some of his ideas of orthodoxy. bining possibilities, filtering and modifying, until at Museum, the first full expression of the new the time in a kind of manifesto that he called »The Second, perhaps, is the architect’s growing some trigger point a visual insight arrives. methodology. The successes of this period were Next Architecture«. He wrote: »When we follow trust in the power of the subconscious mind. The Paradoxically, the project that triggered this honored, as he sees it, by his winning the Brunner the process of organic synthesis we create ex- impulse in that direction was present early on, as more »inspired« version of creativity itself had the Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Let- pressive architecture. As we respond to space far back as his early years with Saarinen, where, most pragmatic mandate. As one of the closest ters in 1981, the citation of which read: »One of needs we do it without subjecting the solution to much as he admired the results, he couldn’t quite Western edifices to the Soviet Union, the Helsinki the most talented architects in this country today. inflexible geometry. It is still geometry, but not or- make peace with the process of elimination pro- Embassy would be, among other things, a surveil- His works display a rare combination of crafts- thogonal or circular; it is polygonal. Based on cedure that Saarinen required. It seemed like an lance site. But as technology gives, it also takes manship and poetic spirit.« polygonal geometry, it is free-form, not organic. enormous expenditure of energy, making concrete away. Advances in satellite systems made this key Polygonal architecture allows us to express space what the visualizing mind could often see for itself. intended function redundant, and funds were allo- Italy has been both a literal and a symbolic pres- in form without compromising functional or aes- The creative restlessness that resulted pulled him cated elsewhere. The legacy for the architect was ence for my father. Literally, there is the whole sto- thetic considerations. Polygonal form does not toward Yamasaki, and then, when that firm’s ap- his trust in a new design procedure. ry of Civita di Bagnoregio, the hilltown in Lazio ›follow function‹, but it is expressive of function. proach seemed too confining, drove him to found My father has since learned to trust the process where in 1967 he bought a small house that was The difference is that the form that follows func- his own office. absolutely, finding every time that the intuition is really more ruin than house, and which he had tion is a wrapping skin around function; the form Even so, this trust – belief – in the subcon- confirmed by retrospective analysis. And this, he slowly restored over a period of years. The con- that is arrived at through organic synthesis re- scious was slow in developing. The architect quickly points out, is something that CAD design nection there – for both purchase and restoration sponds to both interior and exterior considera- needed the confidence that comes from the suc- can never accomplish, no matter how sophisticat- – was his old friend from the Yamasaki office, As- tions and is thus expressive of both.« cessful completion of a number of challenging de- ed the programming. For him, intuitive synthesis tra Zarina, who after her Rome Prize year had de- Zevi sent an enthusiastic note from his journal, sign problems. Maybe he also needed some of trumps procedural solution every time. It is the cided to make Italy her home, and who had been the internationally influential L’architettura, in 1984: the explosive psychological and emotional ener- only approach, too, that can make a place for the the first to buy a place in this village she had come »Long live your ›Next Architecture‹! Viva la tua ›Ar- gies of midlife. My father was just turning fifty, the non-rational metaphor – the visual or structural upon. chitettura Futura‹!« classic age of male unrest, more or less the age theme that confers a deeper identity on the pro- »Civita« (as it was called from the first) was when his one-time friend and almost-client John ject. This element is not in any objective sense much discussed in our family, though for a long Zevi would soon enough be influential in getting DeLorean resigned his high position at General part of the »given«, though in fact it is discovered time the reality was hard to fathom. The town is the architect involved in a series of ambitious ur- Motors and went off like Don Quixote to try to de- there, often deeply embedded in the intended accessible only by footbridge, with donkeys used ban initiatives in Florence, Turin and Venice – pro- sign the dream-car that would bear his name. function or use of the building. for larger transport – it was (and still mainly is) an jects which inaugurated what was for him a very The architect staged his own dramatic mid-life Speaking about intuitive design, as the archi- image straight out of the Middle Ages. I remember important »Italian phase«, but which did not, for statement, but in a whimsical spirit. When his 50th tect often does, he is careful to emphasize certain that when we stopped off there once during a various reasons bound up with upheavals in the birthday arrived, he disappeared from the office, constraints – lest anyone think that the process is family trip to Europe, we mainly stared at crum- Italian economy, come to fruition. The house in leaving only a few cryptic, slightly ominous-sound- simple, uninformed, or somehow just »magical«. bled walls and gaping patches of sky. What a Civita remains to this day a much-loved place, ing notes. Everything was arranged for maximum He insists that the appropriate response can never shock it was to return years later to find a finished and a symbol of the first promise of that period; dramatic effect. He and my mother flew off to a come before the complex requirements have been house with tile roof and solidly mortared walls but it is also, alas, a reminder of possibilities that Caribbean Island, telling no one. Here he laughs. exhaustively researched and then internalized – perching there on the edge of a cliff. were never realized. »The joke was on me. We came back after a everything from site specifications to functional Civita became his symbolic anchor-point. It rep- My father keeps a small album of photographs week and I was braced for a big reaction. I had no needs. The subconscious works with the totality resented retreat and renewal, »la dolce vita«, and from his time at the Academy, many of which were idea what I’d find. I half-expected that there would of the information and if there is new input from a link back to his Academy stay and the inspira- taken on the night of his talk. These are mostly

22 23 group shots, people caught in conversation in not come later, cannot be added on, but must be 26. Design presentation in Novoli, Italy. needed from the outside. Postmodernism adapts in interesting elaboration in his studies in the mid- garden settings and in front of banquet tables. In part of the process from the very beginning, sug- 27. Gunnar Birkerts with client Thomas Monaghan. architectural quotation as an intellectual exercise – 1970s of underground architecture, and his inge- these photos he is almost always in the middle of gesting that a deep imaginative connection is es- 28. Gunnar and Sylvia Birkerts, 1990. interesting, witty, but also at a fundamental re- nious solution to the Law Library addition at the some polemic, leaning forward, gesturing with his sential. 29. Pastoral Latvian landscape. move from necessity. University of Michigan (1974–81). hands (he is by nature a gesturer). In some he is The obvious question to be asked here is how This was, I think, the substance of his diatribe Italy in those years was hospitable to his idea of talking to Astra, in others with Zevi. Though he is the arrival of digital technology – of computer-as- against Postmodernism – this along with a suspi- design in a way that America was not. For one just fifty, he looks younger – thin, with longish hair, sisted design – might affect this, the artistic, part cion of what was clearly a powerful in-group influ- thing, the country was not enamored of Postmod- his intensity and focus making he wonder if he of the process. Does the high-speed implementa- ence-peddling, most clearly exemplified in the ernism. As the architect put it: »The Italians didn’t suspected then that the Academy was one of the tion of variations – design proceeding along the competition for the Portland Building in Portland, need to go for all the historical reference and quo- high point periods of his life, and this evening pos- »what if we do this?« lines – short-circuit the vi- Oregon, when of the six invited finalists, all promi- tation in their design – they were surrounded with sibly the peak moment of his stay. sionary originating process that generates the nent architects, Gunnar Birkerts was deleted by it. Walk two blocks in Rome and you have walked best design? The revolution is too recent for the juror Philip Johnson (»Not enough Postmod- back and forth through time.« He was stimulated What happened to the architect in his 50s can be results to be in and the assessments to be made. ernism«, he supposedly remarked), who then by the high-profile design sessions convened by explained at some level as a creative transforma- But it may be that at some point in the future pen- added to the list his protégé Michael Graves, a rel- the client, where a room full of highly creative – tion, deep-seated and long in the making, the kind cil and paper will be seen as a radical innovation. ative unknown more gifted at fanciful sketches and differently creative – architects would brain- of artistic emergence that cannot happen where than the kind of structural understanding essential storm together. What in many contexts could be a there is no foundation prepared. Productive intu- Thinking as a writer about the creative process of for creating a major building in real space. Graves recipe for disaster – ego and aesthetics being a ition can only happen when there is great confi- the architect helps me to understand the next was then declared the winner. highly combustible mix – here created several dence and a good deal of absorbed craft and phase of the career, in particular his deep-rooted For my father, then, there was the bitter irony memorable occasions, with refined design sensi- knowledge. The synthetic power that finds solu- disagreement with the reigning ism of this cultural that his creative breakthrough should have come bilities listening, conversing, sometimes disputing, tions does not ignore the analytic or the rational – period – Postmodernism. For a long time I be- when it did, at a point when the winds of fashion but feeding rather than frustrating each other as they are always seen to be present – but it does lieved that the main reason for his opposition was were blowing strongly in the other direction. This they tried to create a highly variable urban envi- not always follow their prescribed path. Rather, simply his rejection of the herd mentality that fuels meant several things. For one, commissions big ronment that would at the same time express the architect searches for an expressive and most fads. He has always derided group-think. If enough to sustain an office were harder to come some essential harmony. uniquely right artistic solution, trusting that de- something is suddenly popular, the odds are that by – more and more prospective clients were During this period, the firm also had other pro- cades of training will support choices that may he’ll find a way to dismiss it. Growing up, I had the lured by the publicized stars of the day. For anoth- jects developing in Italy. One was in Turin, where arrive through a kind of visualization. feeling that the neighbors and the kids in school er, time had passed and a new generation of edi- the Italgas corporation was removing its gas stor- This might be the place to remark on the extra- were somehow all on one team together, while tors and tastemakers had come to power at the age and making a large site available. Repurpos- ordinary importance music has had in the archi- we were a team of our own – we lived in the auto journals, many of them eager to broadcast what ing industrial land was the mandate of the times. tect’s creative process. Though his musical pas- capital of the world and he insisted on driving for- they saw was the new next thing. Gunnar Birkerts Gunnar Birkerts & Associates was commissioned sions have changed over the years – from deep eign-made cars. & Associates, which had for many years seen to prepare a plan for converting the site to for immersion in Bach and the masters of counter- The other obvious reason, I believed, was that cover after cover devoted to its latest buildings, commercial use. When the city did not approve point to the Romantics, to Sibelius – the intensity he found the visual aesthetic irritating. From the was no longer making the splash it once had. the first plan, a second project was developed for of listening has been a constant. I have never had first, his own style, whether he was designing a It was at this point that Italy became so impor- the University of Turin – a facility for the Humani- the sense that he uses the sound as some back- piece of furniture or an office building, has favored tant. My father’s residency at the American Acad- ties faculty. The design concept sought to maxi- ground pattern, to soothe or distract. Rather, it is economy and formal elegance, a repudiation of emy in Rome had led to the friendship and en- mize green zones through vertical use of space, for him an immersion in dynamic form – and in ornament or decoration for its own sake. And cer- dorsement of Zevi, and this now bore fruit in a and also alluded to the former site-function with that way like architecture. He is very susceptible tainly Postmodernism, as practiced by Philip series of challenging commissions – in Florence, cylindrical elements representing oil-storage tanks. to the composer’s emotion as well as the struc- Johnson, Michael Graves, and their mainly East Turin, and Venice. First, he was invited to join a At about this time another challenging design ture, the inner design. More particularly, he was Coast cohort of followers, was a riot of add-on small group of international architects (including project was in the works, a soccer stadium for the fascinated – and stirred – by the way certain com- decorative effects – of details applied because Richard Rogers, Ralph Erskine, Aldo Loris Rossi, city of Venice. The firm proposed a unique, but posers used sound on behalf of images. He cites they were referentially interesting rather than and the much-admired Giovanni Michelucci, who also very practical solution to the perennial prob- Respighi’s Pines of Rome and Church Windows, structurally essential. was ultimately not able to participate) in a major lem of directing and controlling large crowds. The as well as Moussorgski’s Pictures at an Exhibition But the more I contemplate this breakthrough urban initiative in Florence’s Novoli district. It was design called for a structure that would be sur- as examples. phase, announced most strikingly in the design of an exciting international amalgamation. Members rounded by Venetian lagoons and accessed by a My father and I have discussed the role of the the Corning Glass Museum, and later carried on in of the group, hosted very graciously by Fiat, were number of bridges, thus separating the stadium- unconscious in design for many years now. He projects like the University of Iowa Law Building, to work individually on their projects but also in goers into manageable groups. has described in various ways the moment of the the Ferguson residence, or the Kemper Art Mu- tandem; the mandate was to re-establish a viable Alas, liberating and stimulating as was his in- breakthrough, how intuition can find an answer to seum, the more I see that the difference is also urban context after the departure of the Fiat cor- volvement in these very different kinds of projects, a problem only after all of the variables have been philosophical. What underlay these solutions was poration. The conversational give-and-take the architect was to experience a profound disap- absorbed. I can’t help but see certain important a search for an inevitable expressive form, one around the table was stimulating in the extreme. pointment. For it was just at this time that the Ital- links to the writing process as I experience it. For that is an absolute fusion of form and meaning. Gunnar likes to remember this cosmopolitan idea ian economy suffered its much-documented col- me, too, there is only a certain distance that sys- For the architect this meant the discovery, or cre- exchange, which also became the beginning of a lapse – the abrupt removal of credit and available tematic thinking can take me with any project. The ation – or invention – of an utterly singular build- series of international contacts. funding brought initiatives all over the country to a basic line of sense – the argument, the exposition ing, a building perfectly responsive to its program: Gunnar Birkerts & Associates was to design standstill. There was nothing to be done – the – is of course determined by logical sequence. one-of-a-kind architecture arrived at through the what was tagged a »multi-use« building, with dif- projects remained on their drawing boards. I re- But the other organization, what I think of as the experienced visualizing and synthesizing capaci- ferent functions on different levels – a new sort of member that there was a pervasive sense of let- necessary shape, needs to come through some ties of the architect. This, as the architect ex- challenge for the firm. The project tapped the ar- down. Coming home to visit, walking around in his thematic recognition, and this requires more than plains, is why he has always been happiest work- chitect’s growing fascination with Italy and its home studio, I saw the drawings pinned all around intellect. Meaningful form is felt rather than ing with a few select commissions rather than at highly-evolved vocabulary of specific forms tai- on the walls, the photographs and mock-ups. An thought. I’m confident that my father would sec- a faster-paced (and more lucrative) rotation. He fa- lored to need and constraint. In this respect, as in enormous investment of will and creative energy ond me here. He might agree, too, that it is pre- vors the term »appropriate architecture« for what others, Civita – indeed, the whole Italian vernacu- had been aborted by circumstance. At the same cisely for this reason that architecture is an art. he envisions, but to me that has always seemed lar – stimulated his thinking immensely. He studied time, he concedes that whether a project is finally The building primarily serves practical ends, no too modest a description, not suggestive enough the highly evolved juxtapositions, the care for de- built or not, the creative investment, the intensity question, but it also reaches for meaning, for a of the leap of insight required to fuse all of the ele- tail both large-scale and domestic. The Novoli de- of the problem-solving is the same, and in some thematic resonance that enriches the experience ments together into a harmonic whole. sign explores the possibilities offered by urban lay- ways it has an almost equal reality status. of its users, and this is where the more elusive Whatever is the best characterizing label, the ering, where different needs are addressed on dif- In 1984 another powerful and demanding client side of creativity enters in. How does the architect point is that this is design from within, pledged to ferent structural levels. These kinds of problems appeared – Thomas Monaghan, the self-made find the best answer to the practical program and uniqueness, whereas the postmodern ethos has had from the first engaged his imagination, leading multi-millionaire, founder and CEO of Domino’s then fashion that solution into a deeper aesthetic always been the reverse, treating the history of the to the modular gestalt of the master plan for Tou- Pizza, and an enthusiastic admirer of Frank Lloyd statement? It would seem that the fashioning can- art as a kind of archive and applying effects as galoo College back in the 1960s, and showing up Wright (and collector of Wright memorabilia). He

24 25 approached Gunnar Birkerts to design of the Latvia’s deepest cultural and mythical layers, most 30. Gunnar Birkerts exhibition in St. Peter’s Cathe- go way back. It’s almost tribal, this sense that the nature of the library project. The spot was world headquarters for Domino in Ann Arbor, a notably by using the Glass Mountain legend of an- dral,Riga, 1989. there are unchanging essences, all those things filmed in Riga, for Latvian television. There he was, sizable project. cient folklore as a conceptual premise. 31. Commemorative stamp, Latvian National Library. that live in the folklore, in the collective memory.« speaking Latvian, gesturing with his hands in the Monaghan was not exactly a hands-off client – The Latvian National Library project was an im- 32. Commemorative silver Lats coin, Latvian Nation- These days, with the regular to-and-fro travel way that is so familiar to me. I couldn’t stop mar- he wanted, if not an outright imitation, then at very portant psychological culmination. The architect, al Library. required by the National Library, along with the un- veling – the boy who fled with just a suitcase sixty least a building in the style of his Master. Here was now mature and tested and confident in his syn- 33. Gunnar Birkert’s studio in Bloomfield Hills, Michi- derstandable fact that as people get older they five years ago is back – digital, virtual, but very a great and vexing irony. Just when the architect thesizing philosophy, was able to reach deep into gan. look more closely to their origins, all parts of the much himself. was most vigorously formulating his notions of the the accumulated materials of his heritage. He connection have grown very strong. The old I mentioned the new studio, which is a well-lit organic, the appropriate – of design evolving from could draw freely on his knowledge of Latvia’s cul- essences and the sense of the contemporary. In- space in my parents’ new condominium in Welles- the constraint of its needs and uses – he was be- ture and folklore, its climate and natural features, terestingly – and paradoxically (given this almost ley, Massachusetts. The scale of the enterprise ing asked to create a building that would in the to create a concept that was in no sense an tribal awareness) – the internet has become a vital has shrunk down. The studio in our Michigan largest sense of the word be a kind of quotation, adding up of factors and site constraints, but that source of contact. My father begins the day by home was vast and high-ceilinged, with room for or homage – »in the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright«. achieved instead a creative emotional expression logging on and checking his Latvian sites, and drawings and sketches on the walls and models Still, the commission interested my father in other that embodied the spirit of his place of origin. through the day keeps up with project develop- on the various tables. Here my father has to con- ways. Certainly it would be a fiscal lifesaver for the Though the project has had to go through innu- ments. At the same time he is urging my mother tent himself with what is within arm’s reach. But firm. The challenge, he knew, would be to bring merable modifications as a result of political and to master the laptop so that she can work on the space still vibrates with an energy of purpose. his client around, to de-emphasize the Frank budgetary demands, he has never doubted the translating a family genealogy ... »It was a tough move in that sense«, he admits. Lloyd Wright component, using it as part of the rightness or integrity of the core conception. And Latvia, then, has become the dominant theme »I had to give so many things to the Bentley »given« of the conception, but not as its guiding though it is a deeply meditated public design, of his life, in a sense. He returns at least four times Archive. You build and gather for all those years, principle. »I told Tom that I would do it«, he says, through it he feels a profound connection to his a year now, usually together with my mother, but and then you start to reduce.« But for all that he »only if at every point it’s at least 51% Gunnar personal roots. not always. And he is very busy when he goes, seems at peace with the new scale of operations. Birkerts. He said OK.« not just with business pertaining to the National His response, after various trial designs, was to My father had left Riga while still in his teens, at Library, but also with serving on juries and judging It helps, I suppose, that as an architect he has isolate elements of the Wright »grammar« and that point completely unsettled by the chaos of panels, and developing several other projects, in- been deeply self-reliant all along, carrying all that adapt them to his own uses. He took key features the war years, and had later moved to America to cluding, significantly, the design for the Museum of is most important in his head. I marvel at this sim- – the brick, the overhang of the copper roof, the build a life for himself. Though he insists he is not Occupation – a transformation of a Soviet-era war ple fact: that for all the shifts of history, all of the berms, the horizontality – and tailored them to the a backward-looking person, the loss of all that museum that uses metaphorical elements with a technological advances and complications of our needs of the building. Monaghan was enamored was most familiar had to have been devastating at bold simplicity, playing off the primary associations world, he remains, at his core, the man with the of superlatives. »He wanted the biggest this, the some level. For three decades he did not set eyes of the colors black and white. The two colors have pencil, relying on the power of inner visualization, best that«, recalls my father, whose design re- on his mother, and there were many years when taken on a strong metaphorical charge, express- on the glimpse of rightness that can guide him to sponse was to elongate, to design what would ul- he and Merija lost contact completely, neither ing, alternately and in combination, darkness and a solution. He does depend on others to deal with timately be one of the longest buildings of its kind knowing whether the other was alive. It was an light, good and bad, freedom and oppression, the intermediary technology—he himself retains in the world. With Domino, every strategy was de- enormous consolation for him finally to establish transparency and opaqueness – all of which can his faith in the power of the mind, conscious and bated, contested, as client and architect went connection in 1946, though for a long time they be seen as features of the Latvia’s history in recent unconscious, to digest the information and trans- back and forth. This was, I know, a period of great could do no more than write to each other. Mother decades. The Latvian people have responded form it into articulate visual form. And sitting there, inner struggle for my father, between his practical and son did not set eyes on each other until 1969, with recognition and enthusiasm to this visual talking to him in his studio, seeing all his materials needs for his office and his architectural idealism. when the Soviets at last gave Merija a visa that al- sign-language – indeed, the metaphor has proved laid out neatly on the long table, the files full of His method kept coming up against the insistence lowed her to travel to Michigan for a visit. By that stronger than any practical obstacles that have documents ready to hand (at least once per ses- of Monaghan’s conception, and his disdain for ref- point she was elderly, but still mentally vigorous, come up with the project. sion he goes burrowing after some item I have to erential architecture was tested at every point by very keen to learn everything about his accom- Busy with these various homeland initiatives, see), the shelves lined with labeled photo albums, the »homage« nature of the undertaking. The final plishments – she became his greatest booster. I the architect finds himself much rejuvenated by and above those what amounts to a collection of result, though hard won, reflects the architect’s have vivid memories of the two of them together the work, the meetings, and by renewing his con- models from unbuilt projects (»representing so persistence – it is an elegant structure that ac- during her visits – sitting together on our upstairs nection with a city as energetic and cosmopolitan much compressed thinking«, he says, shaking his knowledges Wright in various ways but also re- couch talking in almost conspiratorial fashion, or as Riga. And Riga has, in turn, embraced its na- head), and on the wall, flanked by a small Latvian tains its independence of expression. walking together, my father holding her arm pro- tive son. In 1989 it presented a major exhibition of flag, a large photograph of Riga, I have to grant, tectively as he leaned in to hear what she was his architecture in the medieval St. Peter’s Cathe- admiringly, that this is a man who has lived his If I can pursue a metaphor – assuming again that saying. dral – arguably Riga’s major landmark. Then, in passion, and who has been given the great good there are certain creative similarities between liter- My parents found ways to keep the culture 1995, recognizing his contribution both to archi- fortune to be living it still. He knows this, but he ary and architectural conception – I would say that alive without meshing themselves too deeply into tecture and his country, he was awarded the pres- doesn’t make too much of the fact. There are writing about my father’s life and career I have the local Latvian community. We spoke Latvian tigious »Order of the Three Stars«. And in 2005 things to do. Laid out on the bed behind us I see tried to follow a line of growth and change, reject- at home; there were books and paintings every- the city honored the National Library with the is- the rolls and rolls of drawings he will start to work ing neat symmetries and conventional (orthogonal) where; and holidays kept a strong trace of the old sue of a silver 1 Lat coin; two years later a com- with as soon as I leave. patterns. Doing so, I have sometimes felt that I traditions. Both my parents accepted – or sought memorative postage stamp was released. The was offering my own version of an »appropriate« – a certain degree of outsiderness, never looking distinctive image of the »Castle of Lght« is familiar or organic presentation, descriptions which both to join the American mainstream, keeping the feel- to all. appeal to me. But when I come to the most re- ing of difference alive. Though I resented this as a I have a sense of coming full circle here, but cent phase of development, I have to change my child, wanting the conformity above all else, as there are a few twists. The continuity is, of course, approach, find some way to present a circum- I’ve gotten older and have recognized how easily gratifying, but the nature and degree of change stance that is almost too neatly symbolic, that traditions get erased, I understand – and appreci- are also there to be remarked. I started out writing makes too nice of a shape. If it were an event in a ate – their way of doing things. For them, I’m sure, about the architect and the pencil, the old-style novel, a critic might rightly object that it was not it was an interesting tension, or ambivalence. creative visualization, and then I looked back at plausible. I’m talking about that fact that in 1989, Though I never heard either of my parents express his coming of age in what now seems in many the Latvian-born architect, son of two leading liter- a strong desire to go back to Latvia to live, there ways a very different world. This one career has ary people, a writer and polemicist and a folklorist, was always the sense that it was still the home spanned an amazingly dynamic (and troubled) his- long exiled from his homeland, should be invited in place. When I ask him to talk about its meaning torical period and the contradictions are extreme. I late career to design the Latvian National Library for him, my father pauses for a long time. »Finally«, visited him in his new studio yesterday, and at one in Riga, a project that returns him not just literally – he says, »my sense of Latvia is something deeper point while we were talking he sat me down to professionally – to the place of his origins (just a than all of the interchanges of the present. It goes show me a commercial for the National Library on few kilometers from where he grew up), but that back, not just to then, to my own years of growing his laptop. It had been sent from Latvia (I have no- has also allowed him to indulge to the full his de- up, but to something even deeper – a sense of ticed that most of his e-mail in one way or another sign methodology, in the process tapping some of the land, the nature, the culture and history that relates to Latvia), and featured him reflecting on

26 27 Holtzman & Silverman office building, eye, a veneered plywood, and solid trim. Except 1. Site plan at entrance level. Southfield, Michigan (1983–89) where there are shelves, the walls are articulated 2. Section. with closely spaced, vertical, maple strips, each 3. Floor plan (main level). The Holtzman & Silverman office building site is beveled at a shallow angle to create a point. The 4. Isometric drawing of a section of the building. so narrow that in order to accommodate both the strips stop short of the solid maple base and up- office and automobile parking within required set- per trim leaving a fraction of an inch of air be- backs, grade level was reserved for automobile tween vertical and horizontal elements. The white parking and landscaping. The office structure is painted walls can be seen between each strip and tucked underneath and the hillside retained with above the eight-foot level where the wall is fully re- reinforced concrete walls. At grade, a grove of vealed. This kind of detailing, in which materials trees screens a park-like setting, with both parking are separated by thin »reveals«, is typical of the in- and works of art, from a noisy and unsightly thor- terior, which is itself a narrow band of softly illumi- oughfare. Set back from the street, at the edge of nated space. The ceilings are white to reflect day- the building, an oversize handrail defines an over- light as well as electric light from custom chrome look and corresponds to the line of office windows fixtures. Supplementary lighting is supplied by re- just below. The railing and an elevator lobby, an cessed ceiling fixtures. The office emerges from outcropping of carefully detailed concrete with ex- the hillside with glass facing east to admit diffused posed aggregate, are the only architectural ele- skylight throughout the day. The glass is secured ments visible from the street. in polished, stainless steel frames. The mirror fin- Birkerts regards Holtzman & Silverman as the ish reflects the landscape, diminishes the bound- best interior work his office produced,26 a level of ary between it and the interior, and enhances the quality corresponding to the tastes of the clients, continuity of the wall of glass. The floors are cov- two collectors of art and books that are on display ered with a dark carpet except at a small confer- in the office and around the site. The elevator is ence area whose flooring is leather tiles. the first hint as to the extent to which attention The building is a metaphor for a »cave filled was paid to every aspect of the office interiors. with light«,27 but in its sophistication, the finished The elevator doors are polished stainless steel product, even years after its completion, goes well frames with glass silk-screened in thin, vertical, beyond that allusion. This is underscored by the white stripes. Inside the cab, electric lighting is treatment of the site, which, now screened from concealed above a dropped ceiling; the cab walls the highway, has become a sculpture garden. The and ceilings are black laminate. The office is only trees are carefully trimmed. The rough concrete el- 2,600 square feet, about the size of a house, and evator enclosure is studied, proportioned, and symmetrical with work space for a small staff cen- carefully modeled. The overlook to the east is de- trally located in an open area. The two principals’ fined by an oversized pipe rail; its circumference is offices are at opposite ends. The space is com- not scaled to the hand but to the site. This poten- pact and efficient, but the large views and use of tial for designing the land became more a part of daylight make the interior appear spacious. Birkerts’ underground strategy as he developed The interior partition finishes and office furnish- his later projects at the University of Utah, the Uni- ings are primarily maple, in three formats: bird’s versity of California at San Diego, and others.

156 157 5. Surface entrance. 6. Night view from ravine. 7. Interior view.

158 159