Testing the Establishment: Authorial Signature and Professional Method in the Architecture of Gunnar Birkerts, 1958-81

Architectural Practice;Late Modern Architecture;Architecture of the United States;Twentieth Century Architecture;Architecture;Arts;Architecture

Abrahamson, MichaelMcMorrough, John Doyle ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Architectural Practice;    Late Modern Architecture;    Architecture of the United States;    Twentieth Century Architecture;    Architecture;    Arts;    Architecture;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/150014/mtabraha_3.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Though he was once among the most recognizable names in American architecture,Gunnar Birkerts has largely been overlooked in the historiography of late modernism.Birkerts was an unusually introspective and self-reflective architect and his collectionstherefore offer a view into the complex intertwining of the personal and the professionalfor entrepreneurial architects with eponymous firms. Through analyses of Birkerts’sprojects, practice, and pedagogy, the dissertation narrates the confluence of two realities:the persistence of a belief in the artistry of architects and the emergence of conditions thatstretched their model of production to its breaking point. Consisting of intensive analysesof four key projects across the US by the firm Gunnar Birkerts and Associates (GBA), thechapters outline the ideas about artistry that continued to shape this firm’s workingmethods even as large projects prompted Birkerts and his employees to take on newmanagement protocols. Archival records of these projects illustrate the ways Birkertsassured that his authorial signature matched the output of GBA, and vice versa. Thedissertation shows how architecture’s turn toward Postmodernism directed architects tofashion themselves as distinctive personalities with signature approaches to design, andthat for Birkerts, this self-fashioning was accompanied by a rejection of morebureaucratic working methods and by increased focus on, and specialization within, themore obviously artistic domains of architectural practice.