Birthday Reminders

Need a reminder to get a birthday gift for that special architect in your life?  Feel free to import into your Outlook calendar.  Included on the right of their names are some of the seminal works, along with some of the photos I have collected along my travels.

January

Victor Horta                       1.6.1861             Belgian Art Nouveau designer of Hotel Tassel

Julia Morgan                      1.20.1872           American designer of Hearst Castle and estate

February

Alvar Aalto                         2.3.1898             Finnish International Style designer of Finlandia Hall

Paul Williams                     2.18.1894           African-American designer of the Theme Building at LAX

Loius Kahn                         2.20.1901           American designer of Salk Institute

Kahn - First Unitarian Church of Rochester

March

Mies Van Der Rohe           3.27.1886           German-American designer of The Barcelona Pavilion

Van Der Rohe - Barcelona Pavilion

April

Peter Behrens                     4.14.1868           German designer of The AEG Turbine Factory

Julian Francis Abele          4.30.1881           African-American designer of Duke University (then white only)

Behrens - AEG

May

Benjamin Latrobe              5.1.1764             British-American designer of the US Capitol

Gordon Bunshaft               5.9.1909             American modernist designer of Lever House (and best name ever)

Walter Gropius                  5.18.1883           German (and later American resident) leader of the Bauhaus

June

Charles R. Macintosh        6.7.1868             Scottish designer of the Glasgow School of Art

Frank Lloyd Wright          6.8.1867             American designer of Fallingwater and Guggenheim

Antonio Gaudi                  6.25.1852           Catalan designer of the Church of the Sagrada Familia

Gaudi - Segrada Familia

July

Philip Johnson                  7.8.1906             American designer of the Glass House

Inigo Jones                       7.15.1573           English neo-classicist designer of the Queen’s House

August

Charles Bullfinch             8.8.1763             American designer of University Hall, Harvard

Robert Mills                     8.12.1781           American designer of the Washington Monument

Eero Saarinen                   8.20.1910           Finnish-American designer of Dulles Airport Terminal

Mills - Washington Monument

September

Sir John Soan                   9.10.1753           English neo-classicist designer of Bank of England

H.H. Richardson              9.29.1938           American designer of Trinity Church, Boston

October

Le Corbusier                    10.6.1887           Swiss-French designer of Villa Savoye

Christopher Wren            10.20.1632         English designer of St. Paul’s Cathedral

Le Corbusier - Unite d'Habitation, Berlin

November

Andrea Palladio               11.30.1508         Italian Renaissance designer of Villa Rotunda

Palladio - Villa Rotunda

December

Gustave Eiffel (Hon.)      12.15.1832         French Engineer making the list for his Tower

Josef Hoffman                 12.15.1870         Austrian designer of Wiener Werkstatte

Oscar Niemeyer               12.15.1907         Brazilian designer of Cathedral of Brasilia

Eiffel - 1889 World's Fair Tower

What struck me in putting this list together, and there are many more who could have been added, was the prolific amount of important architects born between roughly 1860 and 1890.  These men and women shaped much of the 20^th Century.  Also, December 15 seems to be a harbinger for greatness.  Seems to me there was one more…