Gunnar Birkerts

[1] Birkerts was born and raised in Latvia, but escaped ahead of the advancing Soviet army toward the end of the Second World War.

[3] Birkerts immigrated to the United States that year and initially worked for Perkins and Will, a global design practice based in Chicago.

He moved to the Detroit area in the early 1950s, where he worked for Eero Saarinen, and was a chief designer for Minoru Yamasaki before opening his own office in the city's suburbs.

Birkerts designed a number of notable buildings in the United States, including the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, Corning Glass Museum, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the University of Iowa College of Law, the Duluth Public Library in Duluth, Minnesota,[4] and the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela.

He received an honorary doctorate from Riga Technical University in 1990, the Order of the Three Stars from the Republic of Latvia in 1995 and the Great Medal of the Latvian Academy of Sciences in 2000.

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art , Kansas City, Missouri , designed by Gunnar Birkerts, 1992–1994.
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis , 1973, (now: Marquette Plaza ), in its original configuration.
The Corning Fire Station facade and floor plan. The building has a strict form where small vehicles are placed in the narrow portion at the tip. All function spaces have been baked into the base of the triangle, such as changing rooms, storage room, dining room, dormitory and office, where all rooms are accessed via a wide corridor. [ 2 ]