"The art of architecture is in change"--Bertrand Goldberg

Just discovered this wonderful architect while looking for an image for the last post. Too bad I missed his exhibition at Architech Gallery of Architectural Art.

From the exhibition notes:

All great Chicago architects have seen the world through their own lens. Wright, Sullivan Mies: each one achieved lasting fame through a unique body of work. Bertrand Goldberg was the first Chicago architect to achieve superstar status with simply one project. In the early sixties, Marina City became what Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum achieved for Bilbao, an instantaneous icon forever stamping Chicago as an innovator of Modernism.

[Note from blogster: the Bilbao Museum is controversial for cultural reasons, especially among the Basque].

Goldberg is quoted as saying, "I am a sort of sport, a variation-- the Goldberg variation." His individuality as an artist signaled his understanding of architecture in an industrial age as a social art that's concerned with the individual. "Architecture is the public art that shows people what they've been thinking."

[Note from B: Though the image with this post doesn't really indicate how fluid and dynamic his designs are on the ground]

In his 1982 essay for Inland Architect, "Rich is Right", Goldberg wrote, "Both in the use of space and in the form of space I discovered that behavior can be influenced by the shape of space."

More on Goldberg here.

categories: architecture thought