Architect, United States Gunnar Birkerts is the leading American exponent of organic architecture in the generation of architects that came to maturity in the 1960s. Working in the tradition of Erich Mendelsohn, Hugo Haring, and Eero Saarinen, Birkerts received his architectural education in Stuttgart from 1945 to 1949. During his years in Germany, he was drawn to Scandinavian modernism rather than Bauhaus doctrine, which was still taught at the Technische Hochschule. In 1959 he formed a partnership with Frank Straub, and since 1962 he has been practicing independently in addition to teaching, lecturing, and writing. Birkerts’s early buildings show a rejection of the dogmas of the International Style, and a mastery of site problems that is unusual in any architect, young or old. Within their urban context, his buildings respond to other works of architecture and to dominant geographic features. Moreover, Birkerts playfully utilizes the metaphorical qualities of architecture within the ...