Gordon Bunshaft may only have designed a single house in his whole career, but he was a prolific designer of corporate office buildings, libraries, museums, and more, starting in the 1940s and continuing into the 1980s. Let’s learn about this MCM architect’s career, design philosophy, and contributions.
Gordon BunshaftEarly Life and Influences
Gordon Bunshaft was born on May 9th, 1909 in Buffalo, NY. He spent a lot of time drawing as a kid, because he was often sickly and stuck in his bed. A doctor who looked at his drawings suggested to his mother that he should pursue a career in architecture.
Bunshaft went on to do exactly that, earning undergraduate and master’s degrees from MIT. He then received the Rotch Traveling Scholarship and the MIT Honorary Traveling Fellowship, which allowed him to study in Europe for two years.
Influences and Design Philosophy
Bunshaft’s career began with some work for Edward Durrell Stone. He then briefly worked for Raymond Loewy. He joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in 1937. Aside from his WWII service, he would spend the rest of his career there, retiring in 1979.
Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe both were major influences on Bunshaft, who became a strong proponent of modernist architecture. He was known to be terse and opinionated, and made no secret of his disdain for postmodern architecture. Though his own works were modernist, he had a profound respect for ancient classical styles.
Gordon Bunshaft explained, “[B]ehind it all [i.e., all architecture] is logic. That’s why, in my opinion, postmodern junk that’s being built is a joke. It’s arbitrary and hasn’t a damn thing to do with our times. It’s an insult to history, because the people who do this postmodern stuff don’t really know [history].”
Bunshaft had a keen awareness of history. He did much of his work for corporate clients, whom he compared to the Medicis during the Italian Renaissance. These clients wanted their buildings to espouse progressive values, looking toward the future. So, they were happy to hire Bunshaft to create modernist designs.
Major Works
Here are some of Bunshaft’s most famous works:
- Lever House: Pictured above, this was Bunshaft’s first major project in 1952. Aside from the United Nations Secretariat building, the Lever House was the first major structure in NYC with a glass curtain-wall.
- Sedgwick Houses and Manhattan House: These were all residential apartment buildings Bunshaft designed in NYC.
- The Manufacturers Trust Company Building pictured above was finished in 1954. It was the first bank in the US to feature the International Style.
- Bunshaft’s 1963 Travertine House was his only single family residence design. He created it for himself and his wife. Sadly, it has been demolished.
- Also in 1963, Bunshaft finished the Beinecke Library at Yale University. The façade has no windows, and is made of translucent granite and veined marble, to let in only filtered light.
- The 1971 Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, TX is a travertine building, also with a monolithic façade.
- Bunshaft’s 1974 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden looks like a “brutalist donut” at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.
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