William Wurster

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William Wilson Wurster (1895 - 1973) was an influential American architect and architectural teacher at the University of California, Berkeley and at MIT.

Wurster was born in Stockton, California and is strongly associated with the Bay Area and its regional style, along with Wurster's mentor Bernard Maybeck, the landscape architect Thomas Church, and fellow architect Joseph Esherick. Wurster designed hundreds of California houses in the 1920s through the 1940s using indigenous materials and a direct, simple style suited to the climate. His 1928 Gregory Farmhouse in Scotts Valley, California is regarded as the prototypical ranch-style house.

In 1940 Wurster married Catherine Bauer, an influential figure in her own right in the field of public housing. Both withstood accusations of disloyalty during the Red Scare of the 1950s.

Wurster was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1954 and he received the AIA Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 1969. He was a co-founder of the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, where Wurster Hall is named in his and his wife's honor.

Among Wurster's students was the award-winning architect John Desmond in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

[edit] Readings

  • Gregory, Daniel, "William W. Wurster," Toward a Simpler Way of Life: The Arts & Crafts Architects of California (Robert Winter, editor) Norfleet Press Book/University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles London, 1997, pp. 245-254.
  • Treib, Marc, An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster, San Francisco Museum of Art/University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1995.

[edit] External links