Wright was a graduate of Lawrence Institute of Technology and established his firm in 1949. Wright partnered with Richard Pollman and Irving Palmquist to create Home Planners, Inc., a Detroit-based firm that designed hundreds of modern house plans. These plans were published in a series of house plan books between 1950 and 1970. Wright’s plans could be found in several national magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens. Two of his homes have been identified in Ann Arbor in the Ann Arbor Hills area–one on Shannondale Road and one on Glendaloch Circle.

See also:

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Thomas S. Tanner (1893- 1980) graduated from the University of Illinois in 1917 and then received a Master’s degree in Architecture from the University of Michigan in 1942. Practiced under the firm name Thomas S. Tanner from 1927 to 1962 and then formed a partnership with Henry S. Kowaleweski. Their offices were located at 308-310 S. State Street. Principal works in Ann Arbor include the residences for two “whiz kids” Robert S. McNamara and Arjay Miller. Taught at the University of Michigan and served in the U.S. Navy from 1942-1945. He also did several other modernist residences throughout the city but, especially in the Ann Arbor Hills area.

Ann Arbor Modern Project List:

870 Belfield Circle

2210 Londonderry Road

910 Barton Drive North

1766 Glenwood

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Tivadar Balogh, architect, was born December 16, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Hungarian immigrants. Following his high school graduation in 1944, Balogh enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served in World War II (1945-1946), before enrolling at the University of Michigan on a track scholarship in 1946. While at Michigan, Balogh received the Harley, Ellington & Day architectural scholarship (1951) and an academic honor from the professional fraternity Tau Sigma Delta (1952). Balogh graduated with a degree from the College of Architecture in 1952, and served another tour in the Navy during the Korean War (1952-1954), prior to engaging in professional practice.

Balogh worked as an instructor at Michigan’s College of Architecture and Design throughout most of his career. He taught at the university as a visiting lecturer (1956, 1963), instructor in the extension service (1964-1970), adjunct instructor (1972-1985), and adjunct professor (1985-1997). Balogh also taught graphic design development for two years at Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Michigan (1970-1971). During his tenure in the College of Architecture, Balogh taught classes in communication skills, visual studies, construction materials and methods, building and comprehensive design, and graphics, earning high regard from colleagues and students alike. In 1973, Balogh received the Sol King Award for Excellence in Teaching from the college.

Balogh began his professional architecture career as a draftsman for Detroit mechanical engineer Andrew F. Caughey (1946) and Detroit architect Earl Confer (1947-1948). From 1949 through 1952, Balogh was employed as a designer and draftsman for the Detroit firm of O’Dell, Hewlett & Luckenbach. Beginning in 1954, Balogh began work for fellow Michigan alumnus, and future dean of the College of Architecture, Robert Metcalf (1950), working as one of Metcalf’s draftsmen through 1960. Between 1960 and 1961 Balogh worked as an architect and designer for the firms of Shreve, Walker, and Associates and W.B. Ford Design Associates, both of Detroit.

In 1961, Balogh began his own private practice, based in Plymouth, Michigan, doing modernist residential and commercial work. Balogh’s practice was small, at times consisting of Balogh alone or Balogh assisted by two or three other draftsmen or architects. While Balogh often produced the mechanical and structural drawings on his own, he also worked with a number of consultants, including Robert M. Darvas and Associates, DiClementi & Siegal Engineering, Norman L. Dietrich Associates, and Construction Services Company. By the time of his retirement Balogh had completed approximately 150 residential, institutional, and commercial projects throughout Michigan, Illinois, and Arizona.

In addition to his teaching and professional work, Balogh committed himself to public and professional service. Balogh served on the Plymouth Township Planning Commission (1960-1966), and in 1980 designed the logo for the township’s official seal. Balogh engaged in architectural service and research, as well, as a participant in the University of Michigan’s Architecture Research Lab, a member of the Schoolcraft Community College Architectural Advisory Committee, architectural advisor for the Township of Canton Historical Commission, member of the Plymouth-Canton School District Architectural Program Advisory Committee, board member of the Michigan Society of Architects, and as treasurer (1965), vice-president (1966), and president (1967) of the Huron Valley chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

A talented artist and respected architect, Balogh was the recipient of numerous awards for his work including an Honorable Mention, with Robert C. Metcalf, for a youth center in the Porcelain Enamel Design Competition (1956); Honorable Mention, with Robert C. Metcalf and William A. Werner, for a house in the Morton Arboretum House Competition (1956); a Merit Award, in collaboration with the office of Robert C. Metcalf, from the 18th Annual National Conference on Church Architecture for the Church of the Good Shepherd (1958); two design awards from Progressive Architecture for the Balogh Residence (1957) and the Tennis and Swim Club of Plymouth, Michigan (1972); the Governor’s Award for Excellence of Design in Michigan for the Mercy College of Detroit library addition (1977); a Citation of Merit from the American Plywood Association for the remodeling of Growth Works (1981); the Huron Valley AIA Lifetime Service Award (1998); and the AIA Michigan President’s Award (1998), for outstanding contributions to the community and the profession.

Tivadar Balogh retired from the University of Michigan and private architectural practice in 1997. Balogh died on December 1, 2006.
(from History, Tivadar Balogh collection, Bentley Historical Library)

See also:

• Tivadar Balogh collection, Bentley Historical Library
  

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The Finnish architect and designer Eero Saarinen, son of the architect Eliel Saarinen, was born in 1910. In 1923 the family emigrated to the US. In 1929-30 Eero Saarinen studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière before studying architecture at Yale in New Haven until 1934. A Yale scholarship enabled Eero Saarinen to travel to Europe again but he returned to the US in 1936 to work in his father’s architectural practice. Eero Saarinen also took up a teaching appointment at the Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, of which Eliel Saarinen had been head since the Academy was founded in 1932.
When his father died in 1950, Eero Saarinen took over his practice, running it as Saarinen & Associates in Birmingham until 196. At Cranbrook Academy, Eero Saarinen met Charles Eames in the late 1930s. Experimenting with Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen co-developed new furniture forms and the first designs for furniture of molded laminated wood. In 1940 Saarinen and Eames took part in the “Organic design in Home Furnishings” competition mounted by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
While Charles Eames continued to work on molded furniture in plywood, Eero Saarinen later chose other materials. For Knoll International, Eero Saarinen designed a great many pieces of furniutre, including the 1946-47 “Grasshopper” armchair with bent armrests of laminated wood. In 1947-48 Eero Saarinen designed the “Womb” collection, which was supposed, as the name suggests, to make those seated on it feel as secure and cozy as a fetus in the womb. The “Pedestal Group”, dating from 1955-56, is an Eero Saarinen collection of chairs and tables made of plastic and featuring only one central leg ending organically in a round disc on the floor. The “Tulip chair” also belonged to this group, with which Eero Saarinen wanted to abolish the “miserable maze of legs”.
In 1951 he designed the “Saarinen Collection” for Knoll, consisting of several office chairs, one of the first lines in designer office furniture.
Eero Saarinen’s architectural masterpiece is the signature TWA-Terminal at J.F. Kennedy Airport in New York (1956-52). Between 1958 and 1963 Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC, designed by Eero Saarinen before his death in 1961, was under construction.
[from http://www.eero-saarinen-architect.com/, April 18, 2011]

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Joseph T.A. Lee, (1918-2009), Professor Emeritus of the Univer-sity of Michigan Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and co-founder, chief architect and planner of the Ann Arbor Kerrytown market, died August 15 at his home in Ann Arbor. He was 91. He was born in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada in 1918 of immigrant Chinese parents. His interest in architecture began as a boy when he built pens for pigeons and rabbits, progressing to remodeling his family’s house when he was in high school. Instead of remaining in Nanaimo with his family’s grocery business, he chose to continue his education by attending the University of British Columbia, studying civil engineering. From there he transferred to the University of Michigan (B.S. Civil and M.S. Structural). After completing studies at Columbia University (B.S. Electrical) and working in the private sector he eventually returned to his original interest in architecture, attending evening classes in the School of Architecture at Columbia University. In New York he worked in the architectural firms of Eggers and Higgins, William Muschenheim, Sanders -Malsin-Reiman, and also served as Clerk of the Works at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonia planned community in Pleasantville, New York. In 1952 he was invited to teach at the University of Michigan. For the next three decades he taught at the University of Michigan. He also practiced architecture in Ann Arbor, with George Brigham, Don McMullen, and in private practice. He designed residential, commercial, industrial and institutional projects. In 1969, he formed a private initiative with attorney Arthur Carpenter and ten other Ann Arborites, to renew a part of downtown Ann Arbor.

The corporation, Arbor-A, was committed to rejuvenating the area around the Farmers’ Market, by renovating run-down buildings and renting them to small businesses. He was the Vice-President of Arbor-A and the chief architect and planner for these projects. The first building remodeled was the triangular building (Roach Printing) on the corner of Detroit Street and Fifth Avenue which would house the Pyramid gallery, the law offices of Douvan, Harrington, and Carpenter, and the newly-founded cookware company, Kitchen-port. Against the prevailing trend to relocate businesses to large shopping centers outside of cities, Arbor-A bought the vacant warehouse buildings of the Washtenaw Farm Bureau next to the Farmers’ Market to develop an in-town market. This collection of warehouses was transformed into what is now a well-known Ann Arbor landmark, the “Kerrytown Markets and Shops.” (from ann arbor.com)

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Gunnar Birkerts is an internationally acclaimed architect of the last half of the twentieth century who has been recognized for his expressive forms, his simplification of detail, his innovative work with surface materials and his effective use of indirect daylight. With his design flexibility and commitment to “finding poetry in building technology,” he has pushed beyond the boundaries of the Modern Movement. [1]

Born on January 17, 1925, in Riga, Latvia, Gunnar Birkerts’ childhood was steeped in the mythology of his country, as both of his parents, Peteris and Merija Shop Birkerts, were scholars and folklorists who studied the cultural heritage of the Latvian people. Later in his career, Birkerts expressed his gratitude for the rich, architectural and literary images of his homeland which he believed continued to stimulate his creative process.

While attending the first gymnasium in Riga, Birkerts saw an architectural rendering of an upperclassman which inspired him at the age of thirteen to pursue a career in this field. He completed two degrees in engineering and architecture in 1949 at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, where his training exposed him to both Bauhaus and vernacular design. His education in the craft and technology program gave him an understanding of architectural materials and design construction methodology, which would become enduring interests throughout his career.

During his training, Gunnar Birkerts studied the work of Alvar Aalto, Gunnar Asplund, Sven Markelius and Sigurd Lewerentz in Europe and that of Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn and Marcel Breuer, who had emigrated to the United States. William Lescaze and Frank Lloyd Wright were also of interest to him. However, it was at the U.S. Information Agency Library that he discovered and became attracted to the modern architecture of Eliel and Eero Saarinen with whom he shared northern European roots. Thus, he came to Birmingham, Michigan in December 1949 to seek work with Eero Saarinen, who explained to him upon his arrival in Birmingham, Michigan, that the General Motors Technical Center project was on hold and that no job was available for him. Carrying a letter of recommendation from Saarinen, Birkerts went to Chicago to join the firm of Perkins and Will, which specialized in school architecture. Within a year of his arrival in the United States, he married Sylvia Zvirbulis. Together they had three children, Sven Peter, Andra Sylvia and Erik Gunnar, born in 1951, 1954 and 1967, respectively.

In 1951, Eero Saarinen invited Birkerts to join his firm in Birmingham, Michigan, where he worked with such young architects as Kevin Roche, Robert Venturi and John Dinkeloo. During his four years with Saarinen, he contributed to the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan and Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, Indiana and was the project architect for the Milwaukee County War Memorial. In 1954, he won the young Designer of the Year Award from the Akron Museum of Art. Birkerts was highly impressed by Saarinen’s inventiveness and perseverance, qualities which he carried into his own work. He recalls that “in those days it was a battle to bring modern architecture to the world. The whole quest was evangelistic.” [2]

Birkerts received American citizenship in 1955, shortly after leaving Saarinen’s office to join Donald Grieb in Milwaukee. After one year with Grieb, he was invited by Minoru Yamasaki to work with Yamasaki, Leinweber and Associates, in Birmingham, Michigan. There he was chief designer for the Reynolds Metals Building, the Educational Building at Wayne State University and the Daharan Air Terminal between 1956 and 1959. During this time, he received a number of design awards, including two citations from Progressive Architecture for houses in Wisconsin and first prize in the Cantu, Italy First International Furniture Competition. He was especially proud of the latter because Alvar Aalto, highly esteemed by Birkerts, was one of the jurists.

In 1959, Birkerts became a principal of Minoru Yamasaki and Associates. Despite his admiration for Yamasaki’s intuitive creation process, Birkerts thought, “I had listened long enough. My apprenticeship was over. Now it was my turn to speak.”[3] Accordingly, he left Yamasaki in 1959 to establish the partnership of Birkerts and Straub. With Frank Straub as project administrator and Birkerts as designer, they produced their first independent projects, including the Schwartz Summer Residence (1960-1962) in Northville, Michigan, the Haley Funeral Home (1960-1961) in Southfield, Michigan, the 1300 Lafayette East Apartments (1961-1963) in Detroit, the Marathon Oil Office Building (1962-1964) in Detroit and the Lillibridge Elementary School Addition (1962-1963) in Detroit.

Birkerts began his twenty-nine-year teaching career at the University of Michigan at this time as well. In 1961, he was appointed assistant professor of architecture, becoming associate professor of architecture in 1963 and professor of architecture in 1969. He was awarded the position of professor emeritus in 1990.

Gunnar Birkerts and Associates was established in 1963 in Birmingham, Michigan, when the architect left his partnership with Frank Straub. The 1960s were prolific years for the practice, as Birkerts designed buildings which contained the “bold forms, space before structure, minimal detailing, stratified walls and daylight in interior spaces”[4] which were the hallmarks of his work during this decade. Among his many important buildings of this period were the University Reformed Church (1960-1964) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Detroit Institute of Arts – South Wing Addition (1964), the Fisher Administrative Center (1964-1966) at the University of Detroit, the Lincoln Elementary School (1965-1967) in Columbus, Indiana, the Freeman Residence (1964-1966) in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Tougaloo College Campus Master Plan (1965) in Tougaloo, Mississippi, the Tougaloo College Dormitories and Library (1966-1972) and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (1967-1973).

During the 1970s, Birkerts continued his exploration of glass and metal as surface technologies. He was also an early advocate for the containment of urban sprawl with his Subterranean Urban Systems Study of 1974, for which he received a Fellowship Grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. In 1970, he was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and he received a Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects, Detroit, in 1975. He was also honored by an appointment as Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in 1976. A few of his many notable buildings of this decade are the Contemporary Arts Museum (1970-1972) in Houston, the Dance Instructional Facility (1970-1976) at the State University of New York, Purchase, the University of Michigan Law School Addition (1974-1981) in Ann Arbor, the United States Embassy Office Building (1975, project) in Helsinki, Finland, the Duluth Public Library (1969-1980), the Museum of Glass (1976-1980) in Corning, New York, and the University of Iowa College of Law Building (1979-1986) in Iowa City.
[From Biography, Bentley Historical Library Finding aid]

See also:

• Gunnar Birkerts, papers, Bentley Historical Library
• Gunnar Birkerts Architect
  

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Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959):  In 1950 Mary and Bill Palmer, a young faculty couple, convinced the then 83-year old FLW to design the house at 227 Orchard Hills simply by asking.   The Palmers stayed true to the original design, consulting Wright, or people trained under him after he died, before making any changes.  Now a guest house, it served as the Palmer’s family home their whole married life. 

See also:

• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Palmer House
• Grant Hildebrand with Ann and Leonard K. Eaton, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Palmer House, University of Washington Press: 2007.

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