Bertrand Goldberg

Bertrand Goldberg (1913 to 1997) was an American architect and industrial designer from Chicago, best known for Marina City, the mixed-use complex of two sixty-story towers on the Chicago River whose multi-lobed columns earned the nickname corn cobs. At eighteen he went to Germany to study at the Bauhaus and worked in the small office of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, then finished his training at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago and opened his own office in 1937. His early work included a disassemblable ice cream shop, plywood boxcars and prefabricated housing, and he collaborated with Buckminster Fuller. After Marina City he designed large hospitals with similar structural features, among them Prentice Women's Hospital, since demolished, and wrote on urban issues. His archive is held at the Art Institute of Chicago.