BUNSHAFT, GORDON

BUNSHAFT, GORDON (1909–1990), Pritzker Prize–winning architect. Bunshaft was born in Buffalo, New York, and received his master's degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After winning two fellowships to study abroad, he explored Europe and North Africa. Returning home, he worked first for architect Edward Durell Stone and then joined Louis Skidmore in 1937. Bunshaft first designed some buildings for the 1939 World's Fair. Then World War II intervened and he served in the Army Corps of Engineers. When he returned to work in 1946, his firm had become Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, otherwise known as SOM, and Bunshaft became a partner. His first major project in 1952 was the 24-story Lever House in New York City. This building is often considered to have helped establish the International Style for corporate architecture in America. Known for its use of steel, glass, simplified surfaces, and cantilevered construction, Lever House has since been declared a national historic landmark. Although his garden for Lever House was unrealized, Bunshaft went on to design other gardens with sculptor Isamu Noguchi, such as the sunken garden at the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (1960–64), the Plaza at the Chase Manhattan Bank, New York (1961–64), two gardens at IBM headquarters (Armonk, N.Y., 1964) as well as the garden complex of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. (1974). In 1954 Bunshaft designed the Manufacturer's Trust Bank, a 13,000 sq. ft. glass box on Fifth Avenue, New York, that used clear glass curtain walls because heat-resistant glass was not available in the size needed. These panes were the largest ever used up to that time. Additions to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, N.Y., 1962) and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library (Austin, Texas, 1971) are among Bunshaft's best-known buildings. But his last building, created before his retirement, was his favorite. The design for the National Commercial Bank Headquarters in Jedda, Saudi Arabia (1981–83), combines the movements of natural air – with warm desert air rising through a funnel – with that generated by air-conditioning and through vents. "The dramatic 100-foot-wide façade   openings were designed to provide daylight without direct sunshine." Windows on the top floor are set 10 feet back from the outer wall surface. The citation for the Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureates which Bunshaft received (together with architect Oscar Niemeyer) in 1988 stated that "perhaps no other architect has set such a timeless standard in the urban/corporate world, a standard by which future generations will judge this era, no doubt with acclaim thanks to his abilities. Already acknowledged by peers and critics of his own era, the bestowing of the Pritzker Architecture Prize reaffirms his place in history for a lifetime of creativity in beautify and uplifting the environment." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: C.H. Krinsky, Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore Owings and Merrill (1988); R.A.M. Stern, Architecture and Urbansim Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial (1960). (Betty R. Rubenstein (2nd ed.)