(b Buffalo, NY, 9 May 1909; d New York, 6 Aug 1990). American architect. He graduated in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (BArch, 1933; MArch, 1935). In 1935–7 he was in Europe and North Africa on the Rotch Traveling Scholarship. On his return to New York in 1937 he joined the firm of SKIDMORE, OWINGS & MERRILL (SOM). In 1938, with Robert A. Green (b 1910), he submitted a design in the well-known Wheaton College Art Center (Illinois) competition, which aimed at bringing Modernism to the American campus. The scheme, which won an Honorable Mention, derived from Impington Village College (1936–9) by Walter Gropius and E. Maxwell Fry in Cambs, England, and the Bunshaft and Green design confirmed their acceptance of the International Style idiom. Bunshaft was thus among the first American architects to embrace European Modernism, but unlike others, such as Edward Durrell Stone, Philip Johnson and Eero Saarinen, he never rejected its machine-age imperatives. More pragmatic and vernacular in his approach, he never entered the arena of architectural theory, history or criticism.

• Bunshaft, Gordon
  • Islamic art, §I, 1(iii): Definition: Objections
  • Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
  • collaboration
    • Noguchi, Isamu
  • works
    • Bank, §2(iii): Architecture and decoration, after 1929
    • Harrison and Abramovitz
    • International Style
    • New York, §I, 5: History and urban development, after 1945
    • Saudi Arabia, §1: Architecture
    • USA, §II, 5: Architecture, after World War II: Modernism, Neo-expressionism, Post-modernism
    • Washington, DC, §I, 4: History and urban development, 20th century