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Spotlight: Gordon Bunshaft

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As lead designer of the Lever House and many of America’s most historically prominent buildings, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Gordon Bunshaft (9 May 1909 – 6 August 1990) is credited with ushering in a new era of Modernist skyscraper design and corporate architecture. A stern figure and a loyal advocate of the International Style, Bunshaft spent the majority of his career as partner and lead designer for SOM, who have referred to him as “a titan of industry, a decisive army general, an architectural John Wayne.”

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Born in Buffalo, New York to a Russian Jewish immigrant family, Bunshaft studied architecture at MIT, earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1933 and 1935, respectively. Upon graduation, he spent two years traveling in Europe through fellowships earned at school, and then moved to New York to work with Edward Durell Stone. After a short stint with Stone, he joined Louis Skidmore of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to work on projects for the 1939 N

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Gordon Bunshaft (May 9th, 1909 - August 6th, 1990) was an eminent modernist American architecture. For his achievements in architecture he was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1988.

Gordon Bunshaft was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After his graduation he travelled through Europe and North Africa on two separate fellowships. Upon returning to the United States, he obtained a position as the Chief Designer at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. He became a partner with the firm in 1949 and worked there until his retirement.

Bunshaft influenced American corporate and industrial architecture through his successful efforts to create an identifiable and respectful architectural identity for his clients. He persuaded corporations that contemporary American Architecture could serve as a signature. In his designs he avoided fashion and concentrated on discipline and functional solutions that produce a unified design. In his work, he particularly emphasized the use of artwork, interior detailing and furnishing as a major feature of each building.

His best known work is

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Gordon Bunshaft was a partner in the New York office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and was an adherent of European modernism as well as one of the leaders of a generation of architects who made buildings of glass, metal, reinforced concrete, and travertine familiar in North America. At his best, he created works of highly refined proportion, efficient function, imaginative construction, and adaptation to sites that were often difficult. His later works were often bulkier and simplified in geometric form; nevertheless they include imaginative solutions to complicated problems, humane consideration for those who work in them, and dramatic boldness. His work encompassed institutional buildings such as the Beinecke Library (1963) for rare books and manuscripts at Yale University (a building he thought might potentially be his most enduring work), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1974) on the Mall in Washington, D.C., and the presidential library for Lyndon Johnson in Austin, Texas (1971). Corporate headquarters built to his designs included Lever House (19