15 Facts About Gunnar Birkerts

Gunnar Birkerts was a Latvian American architect who, for the most of his career, was based in the metropolitan area of Detroit, Michigan.

Gunnar Birkerts graduated from the Technische Hochschule, Stuttgart, Germany, in 1949.

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

Gunnar Birkerts immigrated to the United States that year and initially worked for Perkins and Will, a global design practice based in Chicago.

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

Gunnar Birkerts initially practiced in the partnership Birkerts and Straub.

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

Gunnar 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 US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela.

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

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.

Gunnar Birkerts 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.

Gunnar Birkerts 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.

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

Gunnar Birkerts 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.

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