Bertrand Goldberg

1913 - 1997

Bertrand Goldberg was an American architect and industrial designer, best known for the Marina City complex in Chicago, Illinois, the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world at the time of completion.

Goldberg was born in Chicago, and trained at the Cambridge School of Landscape Architecture (now part of Harvard University). At age eighteen, in 1932, he went to Germany to study at the Bauhaus, working in the small office of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Following civil unrest in Berlin, Goldberg fled to Paris in 1933 and soon returned to Chicago, where he first worked for modernist architects Keck and Keck, Paul Schweikher, and Howard T. 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.

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. 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. In the late 1930s, Goldberg was present at the famous meeting of Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at Taliesin. He also was friends with Josef Albers, who taught him at the Bauhaus.

In 1946, he married Nancy Florsheim, granddaughter of Milton S. Florsheim; they had two daughters, Lisa (born 1950) and Nan (born 1952), and one son, Geoffrey (born 1955).

Goldberg's work includes:

Harriet Higginson house in Wooddale, Illinois

Dr. Aaron Heimbach House, Blue Island, Illinois, 1939

John M. van Beuren House, Morristown, New Jersey (with mural by T. Lux Feininger), 1955

Levin House, Flossmoor, Illinois, 1956

Pineda Island Resort, Spanish Fort, Alabama, 1959

Astor Tower Hotel, Chicago, 1963

West Palm Beach Christian Convention Center, West Palm Beach, Florida, 1965

Hilliard Towers Apartments, Chicago, 1966

Elgin Mental Health Center, Elgin, Illinois, 1967

St. Joseph Medical Center, Tacoma, Washington, 1969

Prentice Women's Hospital Building, Chicago, 1975 (demolished 2013)