Bertrand Goldberg
Encyclopedia
Marina City
Marina City is a mixed-use residential/commercial building complex occupying an entire city block on State Street in Chicago, Illinois. It lies on the north bank of the Chicago River in downtown Chicago, directly across from the Loop district...
complex in Chicago, Illinois, the tallest residential concrete building in the world at the time of completion.
Life and career
Goldberg was born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, and trained at the Cambridge School of Landscape Architecture (now part of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
). At age 18, in 1932, he went to Germany to study at the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
, working in the small office of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
. Following civil unrest in Berlin, Goldberg fled to Paris in 1933 and soon returned to Chicago, where he first worked for modernist architects Keck & Keck, Paul Schweikher, and Howard Fisher. Goldberg opened his own architectural office in Chicago in 1937.
Goldberg was known for innovative structural solutions to complex problems, particularly for residential, institutional, and industrial design projects. One of Goldberg's first commissions, in 1938, was for the North Pole chain of ice cream shops. His ingenious design allowed the small shops to be disassembled, transported, and reassembled with little effort. Its flat roof was supported by tension wires from a single, illuminated column rising up through the shop's center; glass windows and a door formed a box below the roof.
Goldberg's experimental plywood boxcars, demountable housing units for military use during and after World War II, led him to seek unconventional forms through mundane materials such as plywood and concrete. Perhaps his best-known commission, Marina City
Marina City
Marina City is a mixed-use residential/commercial building complex occupying an entire city block on State Street in Chicago, Illinois. It lies on the north bank of the Chicago River in downtown Chicago, directly across from the Loop district...
in Chicago (1959-1964), incorporated many different functions into a mixed use complex of five buildings. The two 60 story towers were on the river's edge, and are well known Chicago features, with striking multi-lobed columnar forms often described as "corn cobs". In addition to the towers, comprising apartments and parking, there was a complex pattern of activities that were incorporated into the original design, including an office building, theater, public pedestrian plaza, an active rail line, a marina, an ice skating rink, and a bowling alley. Much of the complex has evolved and changed over time, and the pattern of activities has shifted significantly, but with only minor changes to Goldberg's design. The office building is now a hotel, and the theater is now the Chicago House of Blues
House of Blues
House of Blues is a chain of 13 live music concert halls and restaurants in major markets throughout the United States. House of Blues first location was in Cambridge's Harvard Square. It was opened in 1992 by Isaac Tigrett, co-founder of Hard Rock Cafe, and Dan Aykroyd, star of The Blues Brothers...
. The rail line has since been abandoned, and the skating rink has been covered by a later addition housing a steakhouse.
After the success of Marina City, Goldberg received many more large commissions for hospitals, schools, and other public institutional buildings, such as Prentice Women's Hospital for Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
, science and medical complexes
Stony Brook University Hospital
Stony Brook University Medical Center, located in Stony Brook, New York, is the largest academic medical center on Long Island It comprises Stony Brook University School of Medicine and Stony Brook University Hospital, which is the only tertiary care hospital and Level 1 trauma center in Suffolk...
for SUNY Stony Brook
State University of New York at Stony Brook
The State University of New York at Stony Brook, also known as Stony Brook University, is a public research university located in Stony Brook, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island, about east of Manhattan....
, as well as River City and the Hilliard Homes public housing complex in Chicago.
During his career, Goldberg designed a rear-engine automobile, canvas houses, unique furniture, prefabricated houses and mobile vaccine laboratories for the United States government. He collaborated on some projects with his friend and fellow 'design scientist' R. Buckminster Fuller, as well as other modernists.
In the late 1930s, Goldberg was present at the famous meeting of Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at Taliesin
Taliesin (studio)
Taliesin , near Spring Green, Wisconsin, was the summer home of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright began the building in 1911 after leaving his first wife, Catherine Tobin, and his Oak Park, Illinois, home and studio in 1909. The impetus behind Wright's departure was his affair with...
. He also was friends with Josef Albers
Josef Albers
Josef Albers was a German-born American artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century....
, a teacher of his at the Bauhaus. After the success of Marina City, Goldberg moved his work to focus on larger scale social, planning and engineering issues, and proposed many progressive urban projects, at a time when the future of urban growth and development in the United States was not always clear. Goldberg also wrote extensively on urban issues and other historical and cultural issues.
The Betrand Goldberg Archive is held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
. The archive includes photographs, drawings, correspondence, and audiovisual materials.