Gordon Bunshaft (1909–1990) was an American architect and a leading voice of modern design in the mid-20th century, who spent more than 40 years leading designs at SOM. Born in Buffalo, New York, he studied at MIT and travelled in Europe on a Rotch Travelling Scholarship. He shared the 1988 Pritzker Prize with Oscar Niemeyer and gave the shortest acceptance speech in the prize's history.
Read moreShow less
Lever House in New York (1952), designed with Natalie de Blois, was in the critic Paul Goldberger's words the city's "first major commercial structure with a glass curtain-wall", after only the United Nations Secretariat. One Chase Manhattan Plaza (28 Liberty Street) (1961) is a 60-storey International Style tower whose plaza holds a sunken rock garden by Isamu Noguchi. The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale (1963) has thin marble walls that admit soft light but no direct sun. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (1974) is an open cylinder raised on four massive piers around a central fountain. Gordon Bunshaft's buildings are studied for clear forms, fine materials and the modern office tower.
Manhattan House1951 · New York
Reynolds Metals Company International Headquarters1958 · Richmond
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library1963 · New Haven
American Republic Insurance Company Headquarters1965 · Des Moines
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum1971 · Austin
W. R. Grace Building1972 · New York
Lever House1952 · New York
One Chase Manhattan Plaza (28 Liberty Street)1961 · New York City
140 Broadway1967 · New York
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden1974 · Washington
Solow Building1974 · New York