Continuing the exploration of early American architects, today we take a look at Charles Bulfinch. Bulfinch was born in 1763 in Boston. He studied at the Boston Latin School and Harvard University. Subsequent to that, he did a grand tour of Europe, something that was very popular at that time. You may remember that Sir Robert Smirke as well as Sir John Soane had done the grand tour as well. Bulfinch had a remarkable career-building many private homes, churches, and official buildings. [Read more…]

Asher Benjamin was an American architect. He was born in 1773 in Hartland, Connecticut. Benjamin was a proponent of the Federal Style. He was an alderman in Boston. He is remembered for creating pattern books, books still available in bookstores. These pattern books were the first to bring architectural history, style, and geometry to builders in the field. His drawings were adapted from Great Britain to better suit New England. They provided details such as full house plans, including such details as circular staircases, doorways, fireplace mantels, dormer windows, pilasters, balusters and fences.

Architectural historian Talbot Hamlin writes: “…he, more than any other person is responsible for the character we roughly call ‘Late Colonial’; his moldings, his doors and windows, and his mantels and cornices decorate or at least inspire the decorations of numberless houses up and down the New England coast and in the New England river valleys.”


Leavitt Hovey House now Greenfield Public Library
1797, Greenfield, Massachusetts




First Deerfield Academy now Memorial Hall
1798, Deerfield, Massachusets




Old South Congregational Church
1798, Windsor, Vermont




Charles Street Meeting
1804, Boston, Massachusets




Old West Church
1806, Boston, Massachusets




Headquarters House
54-55 Beacon Street
1808, Boston, Massachusetts




First Parish Church
1809, Ashby, Massachusetts




Centre Church on the Green
1814, New Haven, Connecticut




Town House
1825, Peterborough, New Hampshire




Unitarian Church
1825, Peterborough, New Hampshire




Unitarian Church
1827, Nashua, New Hampshire




70-75 Beacon Street
1828, Boston, Massachussets




Asa Waters Mansion
1832, Millbury, Massachusetts

Having started with the 8th member of the Chicago Seven, David Chipperfield, a couple of weeks ago, I thought we should go back to number 1 – Stanley Tigerman.

Stanley Tigerman (1930-2019) was an American architect, theorist, and designer. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – but did not pass. After several career changes and apprenticeships, he was accepted at the Yale School of Architecture and obtained a Masters degree. In 1961 he established Stanley Tigerman and Associates Ltd. In 1976 he became one of the members of the Chicago Seven. A group that, as I mentioned previously, was opposed to the modernist movement popular with the followers of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. He was the unofficial chief of the Chicago architects. Tigerman is credited with 450 design projects and 175 built works.


Daisy House
1972, Porter Beach, Indiana




Black Barn
1974, Frog Hollow, Michigan




Hot Dog House
1974, Harvard, Illinois




Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
1976, Chicago, Illinois




House with a Pampadour
1980, Dunes, Indiana




Self Park
1986, Chicago, Illinois




Powerhouse Energy Museum
1990, Zion, Illinois




Pacific Garden Mission
2007, Chicago, Illinois




Holocaust Museum & Education Centre
2009, Skokie, Illinois

Today we explore a construction style. The Diagrid. The diagrid is load bearing diagonal structure with diagonal and horizontal structures. It is most often steel, but can also be wood or concrete. It is decorative, structural, and reduces the need for interior supporting walls thus more open floor. The construction style uses less material, less welding is striking and aesthetically pleasing. It also allows for curved structures and benefits of a cost-saving by using less material. I think my favourite in this selection is the Atlas Building. The most famous of course is St Mary Axe aka “The Gherkin”.


St Mary Axe “Gherkin”
2004, London, England




Seattle Library
2004, Seattle, Washington




Atlas building
2006, Wageninger, Netherlands




Hearst Tower
2006, New York, New York




Tornado Tower
2008, Doha, Qatar




170 Westhafen Tower
2009, Frankfurt, Germany




Aldar Headquarters Building
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates




Guangzhou International Finance Centre
2010, Guangzhou, China




Capital Gate
2013, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates




CCTV – China Central Television HQ from China World Trade
2013, Beiging, China




The Bow
2013, Calgary, Alberta




Leadenhall Building
2014, London, England




170 Amsterdam
2015, New York, New York




Poly International Plaza
2016, Chaonyang Qu, China

Sir David Alan Chipperfield is an English architect, born in London in 1953. Chipperfield graduated from the Kingston School of Art in London in 1976. He studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London. He has worked with many celebrated architects: Douglas Stephen, Norman Foster, and Richard Rogers. He established David Chipperfield Architects, in 1985. The firm has offices in London, Berlin, Milan, and Shanghai.

“Rowan Moore, the architecture critic of The Guardian of London, described his work as serious, solid, not flamboyant or radical, but comfortable with the history and culture of its setting. “He deals in dignity, in gravitas, in memory and in art.”


River and Rowing Museum
1997, Henley on Thames, UK




Americas Cup Building
2006, Valencia, Spain




Des Moines Public Library
2006, Des Moines, Iowa




Museum of Modern Literature
2006, Marbach, Germany




Neues Museum
2009, Berlin, Germany




City of Justice
2011, Barcelona, Spain




The Hopworth Wakefield
2011, Wakefield, UK




Turner Contemporary
2011, Margate, Ken, UK




Museo Jumex
2013, Mexico City, Mexico




Saint Louis Art Museum
2013, Saint Louis, Missouri

Having started the exploration of the Chicago Seven last week with Helmut Jahn, considered the 8th member, I think we should now to see who the original Chicago Seven members were. We’ll start with Thomas H. Beeby.

Beeby was born in Chicago, Oak Park to be more precise, in 1941. He received his bachelor’s degree at Cornell University then his Master’s degree at Yale. With James Hammond, he founded Hammond Beeby & Associates in 1971. He taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology and later became dean of the Yale School of Architecture. The Chicago Seven challenged modern architecture in the 1970s and 1980s. It wasn’t so much the modern style of Mies Van der Rohe they didn’t like, but more his followers they objected to. They changed the spirit of architecture in Chicago. [Read more…]

Helmut Jahn was a German-American architect. Born in 1940 in Zirndorf, Germany his father was schoolteacher and his mother a housewife. He started his architecture studies at the Technical University of Munich then at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He joined Charles Francis Murphy’s architecture firm in 1967, eventually taking sole control and renaming the firm Murphy/Jahn. He was the 8th member of the Chicago Seven (something else we’ll need to explore). Jahn died in a bicycle accident near his home 2021. This blog post on dezeen features a short documentary on Helmut Jahn “In a Flash”


Messeturm
1991, Frankfurt, Germany




One American Plaza
1991, San Diego, California




Caltex House
1993, Singapore




Hitachi Tower
1993, Singapore




Cologne Bonn Airport
2000, Cologne, Germany




Deutsche Post Tower
2003, Bonn, Germany




Munich Business Hower
2003, Munich, Germany




IIT Student Housing
2003, Chicago, Illinois




Veer Towers
2010, Paradise Nevada




Wesser Tower
2010, Breman, Germany




Joe and Rika Mansueto Library
2011, Chicago, Illinois




Cosmopolitan
2013, Twarda, Warsaw




5 West Street
2016, New York, New York




Thyssenkrupp Test Tower
2017, Rottweil, Germany