Walter Netsch (1920–2008) was an American architect based in Chicago, closely associated with brutalism and with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He joined SOM in 1947, became its partner for design and stayed until 1979, opening his own practice in 1981. His signature approach, Field Theory, builds complex shapes from rotating squares. He was lead designer for the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and led the team for the University of Illinois Circle Campus in Chicago. He designed 15 libraries and the east wing of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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The Inland Steel Building in Chicago (1958), designed with Bruce Graham, was the first skyscraper built in the Loop after the Great Depression: 14 exterior columns carry its whole weight, leaving the offices inside free of columns. The Cadet Chapel, US Air Force Academy (1962), is a row of seventeen spires formed by a tubular steel frame of 100 identical tetrahedrons, clad in aluminium, with coloured glass filling the gaps between them. The Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago (1970) is built of grooved limestone that from a distance looks like concrete.
