Gunnar Birkerts, 1925-2017
John Hill
15. août 2017
National Library of Latvia, 2014, Riga (Photo: Владимир Королёв/Wikimedia Commons)
The Latvian architect, who most recently designed the National Library of Latvia in Riga, died on Monday at the age of 92.
Born in Riga, Latvia, in January 1925, Birkerts moved to the United States in 1949 after studying in Latvia and Stuttgart, Germany. He worked for Perkins and Will, Eero Saarinen, and Minoru Yamasaki before opening Gunnar Birkerts and Associates in the Detroit suburbs in 1962.
Notable buildings designed by Birkerts include the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis in 1973, a 1976 addition to the Corning Museum of Glass in New York State, the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City in 1994, and, two years later, the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela.
Birkerts designed the National Library of Latvia as a "Castle of Light," its angular form rising to an apex that would, to the architect, stand as a beacon on Riga's skyline. Birkerts was invited as early as 1988 to design the library, but political independence and the formation of a new state delayed construction for twenty years, over which time Birkert's design evolved into its final form. The library was completed in 2014.
Gunnar Birkerts's son, writer and critic Sven Birkerts, announced his father's death on social media with, fittingly, a sketch of his last project – what will probably considered the architect's magnum opus.