Date:
Location: Chicago Online event via Zoom
Join MasContext on Tuesday, February 4, at 6pm CDT for an online presentation by Martin Schwartz, author of the book Gunnar Birkerts: Metaphoric Modernist, to commemorate what would have been the 100th birthday of architect Gunnar Birkerts.
In contrast to many prominent and accomplished architects of the twentieth century, Gunnar Birkerts never settled into a singular style or rigid set of motifs from which his projects were generated. He did not, as we say these days, “brand” himself. Instead, he worked in the manner of a small number of architects at the top of the profession, including Rafael Moneo, Renzo Piano, Eero Saarinen, Jorn Utzon, and Peter Zumthor, who find each project to be particular enough to demand architecture that is, if not wholly different from what he has done previously, at least worthy of a significant resynthesis of his many, closely-held enthusiasms. Birkerts’s work was not a demonstration of the validity of a theoretical position, save that architecture is capable of meaningful expression and that his search for meaning led him to find practical solutions. His architecture was a demonstration of his process, of finding meaningful correspondences in form, in culture, of intuitive energy informed by professional craft. Nor did Birkerts specialize. He completed many types of buildings, but even as he designed several libraries and churches, but he did not narrow his inquiries and did not repeat himself.
This presentation, on the occasion of Birkerts’s 2025 centenary year, will attempt to capture something of the range of his fifty years of practice and, in particular, his commitment to generating buildings with his understanding of daylight. Martin Schwartz will discuss Birkerts’s works from his early exploration of daylight and structure in the University Reformed Church (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1963–1964) to his final project, in his homeland, the National Library of Latvia (Riga, Latvia, 1989–2014).
The zoom link will be emailed to attendees closer to the date of the event.
For more information about this program, please visit: https://mascontext.com/events/gunnar-birkerts-at-100
