Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Abstract

During the years when modernism triumphed in American architecture, few architects worked more actively to promulgate that vision than Gordon Bunshaft, none was more adept at translating the ideal images of Mies van der Rohe Le Corbusier into buildable, corporate realities. Standards of design practice established by Bunshaft in conjunction with his firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill came to be the measure by which much American work was judged, the look of American cities changed accordingly.Carol Herselle Krinsky's analysis of Bunshaft's work is the first complete study of this important at times difficult architect. Her analysis benefits not only from newly available source material but also from extensive interviews with Bunshaft himself. What emerges is an extraordinary portrait of one of the major architects of the twentieth century as seen through his buildings the efforts to bring those buildings into being. The book also takes into account Bunshaft's clients who were often major figures in the worlds of business politics.Krinsky discusses such icons of modern architecture as Lever House the Manufacturers Hanover Trust, as well as such influential but less well known buildings as the Istanbul Hilton, the Hag Terminal National Commercial Bank in Saudi Arabia, the Banque Lambert in Brussels, the Pepsi Cola Company Headquarters in New York City. She relates Bunshaft's pioneering technological innovations to the buildings they enhanced clarifies the collaborative workings of his phenomenally successful firm.Carol Herselle Krinsky is Professor of Fine Arts at New York University a past president of the Society of Architectural Historians. She is the author of Synagogues of Europe: Architecture, History, Meaning and Rockefeller Center. This book is included in The Architectural History Foundation American Monograph Series.