Gunnar Birkerts

Gunnar Birkerts (Gunārs Birkerts, January 17, 1925 – August 15, 2017) was a Latvian American architect who, for most of his career, was based in the metropolitan area of Detroit, Michigan.

Some of his notable designs include the Corning Museum of Glass and the Corning Fire Station in Corning, New York; Marquette Plaza in Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri; and the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela.

He graduated from the Technische Hochschule, Stuttgart, Germany, in 1949.

He acknowledged being influenced by Scandinavian tradition and the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.

Birkerts immigrated to the United States that year and worked initially for Perkins and Will, based in Chicago.

He moved to the Detroit area in the early 1950s, where he worked for Eero Saarinen, and was chief designer for Minoru Yamasaki before opening his own office in the city's suburbs.

Birkerts also maintained an architectural office in Wellesley, Massachusetts

He initially practiced in the partnership Birkerts and Straub.

Birkerts joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1959 and taught until 1990.

The firm received Honor Awards for its projects from the (national) American Institute of Architects in 1962, 1970, 1973, as well as numerous awards from the Michigan Society of Architects and the local chapter.

In 1963, he set up Gunnar Birkerts and Associates in Birmingham, Michigan.

In 1970, Gunnar Birkerts was selected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and a Fellow of the Latvian Architect Association in 1971.

He received numerous individual awards, including a 1971 fellowship from the Graham Foundation, the Gold Medal of the Michigan Society of Architects in 1980, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1981, and the 1993 Michigan Artist of the Year award.

The ACSA (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) honored Birkerts with the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award in 1989–90.

Birkerts designed a number of notable buildings in the United States, including the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, Corning Glass Museum, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the University of Iowa College of Law, the Duluth Public Library in Duluth, Minnesota, and the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela.

In 1989, Birkerts was commissioned to design the new building for the National Library of Latvia in Riga, Latvia, which had great personal meaning for him.

Also known as the Castle of Light, he drew from Latvian folklore about the Glass Mountain for its architectural form.

He received an honorary doctorate from Riga Technical University in 1990, the Order of the Three Stars from the Republic of Latvia in 1995 and the Great Medal of the Latvian Academy of Sciences in 2000.

Birkerts was an honorary professor at The University of Illinois and was the Architect-In-Residence at the American Academy in Rome.

He also was a member of the Latvian Union of Architects, honorary member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Riga Technical University.

Birkerts married Sylvia, who survived him.

They have three grown children, Sven Birkerts, a literary critic and professor; Andra Birkerts, an interior designer specializing in residential work; and Erik Birkerts.

The building was constructed over the period 2008 to 2014.

In 2014, the National Library of Latvia in Riga was completed to his design.

Birkerts was born and raised in Latvia, but escaped ahead of the advancing Soviet army toward the end of the Second World War.

Birkerts died at the age of 92 on August 15, 2017, in Needham, Massachusetts, of congestive heart failure.

Perkins+Will

Eero Saarinen

Minoru Yamasaki

Personal Work

Work Done while Faculty at The University of Michigan (Birkerts & Straub, Birkerts & Associates)

Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan