Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

Michigan-based architect, founder of Gunnar Birkerts and Associates, professor in the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The collection is comprised of six series: Personal papers, Professional papers, Faculty papers, Project records, Personal Project Files and Personal Correspondence and Files. Personal papers includes biographical information, family photographs, early architectural drawings, and course notebooks and project drawings completed while a student at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart. Professional papers includes transcripts and notes of speeches, lectures and seminars (many of these are also available on audiotapes; some are available on videocassettes). Also included are correspondence, awards, travel diaries with conceptual drawings, newspaper and journal articles and photographs. Faculty papers include course and other materials relating to his career as professor at the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Project files contains textual files, photographs, and conceptual drawings associated with 122 of the buildings and projects designed by Birkerts. Scanned images of some conceptual drawings are available online.

The Gunnar Birkerts Collection offers researchers the opportunity to study the personal, professional and faculty papers and conceptual sketches of one of the masters of American modern architecture, whose career spans the second half of the twentieth century. The collection encompasses 15 linear feet of Birkerts' student work, notes and transcripts of speeches, lectures and interviews, video and audio tapes, writings, correspondence, awards, travel diaries, academic course materials, photographs and project records. Perhaps the greatest significance of this collection lies in its presentation of over 1900 drawings of 122 buildings and projects by the architect's own hand, many of which are valuable, early conceptual sketches.

In its pairing of narrative and visual documents, the Gunnar Birkerts Collection offers a rich perspective on the architect himself, illuminating his views on the creative process and the resulting conceptual designs which have defined his expressive architecture over his illustrious fifty-plus-year career. The Gunnar Birkerts Collection is the architect's deeply personal legacy. He recognizes that, while some of his buildings may be demolished over time, his original conceptual designs on paper are conserved here for future generations to study and enjoy. To this end, he has endowed the Gunnar Birkerts Collection to ensure that his drawings will be preserved and that his place in architectural history can be studied and understood.

The Gunnar Birkerts Collection is comprised of six series: Personal Papers, Professional Papers, Faculty Papers, Project Records, Personal Project Files and Personal Correspondence and Files. The narrative and visual documents in these series illuminate the full breadth of the architect's life and work, from his early years as a student at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Germany in the 1940s to his career in Michigan as an internationally acclaimed architect, esteemed design professor and global lecturer from the early 1950s to the present.

Michigan architect, mainly with firms Sanford Rossen A.I.A. Architects and Rossen-Neumann Associate in Southfield, Michigan, best known for design of several outdoor music venues, collection is primarily of buildings designed by Rossen with some papers related to various projects.

The Sanford Rossen Collection is comprised almost entirely of black and white photographs and color slides of buildings and complexes designed by Sanford-Neumann & Associates during the 1970s. There are a few folders of projects undertaken in the 1960s and in the early 1980s, but the bulk of the material represents the period during which Rossen was associated with Kenneth Neumann. Although the collection includes some slides and photographs of architectural drawings, there is little of substance in this regard, and there is virtually no printed documentation related to individual buildings. The collection will therefore best serve the researcher interested in the visual representation of newly constructed buildings in this time period.

Rossen utilized the services of Balthazar Korab, an internationally acclaimed Detroit-based photographer, to capture on film the essence of many of his buildings. (In 1964, Korab was awarded the American Institute of Architects' Medal for Photography of Architecture, and his photographs have been exhibited in numerous major galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts.) Rossen had numbers of these prints dry-mounted to hang on office walls and featured others in marketing materials. Some of the photographs are signed by Korab, but the majority are not, and for most, the identity of the photographer is unknown. Researchers wishing to study examples of effective and exceptional architectural photography, however, will find the collection a rich resource, particularly for Michigan area buildings.