Josep Lluis Seri

Josep Lluis Seri
b. Barcelona, 1902;
d. Barcelona, 1983.

Josep Lluis Seri - Spanish architect, planner and academic who played a leading role in the development of Modern Movement planning theories. Born into an artistic Catalan family, Sert graduated from the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura in Barcelona in 1929. He then worked briefly with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in Paris before setting up his own practice in Barcelona. An idealistic Modernist, Sert helped to organize the first group of architects in Barcelona affiliated to CIAM. The group GATEPAC was concerned with the role of architects in city planning and encouraged teamwork in the design process. In 1937 Sert returned to Paris, where he designed the Spanish Pavilion for the World’s Fair. He moved to the USA two years later and from 1941 to 1958 was an associate with the town planning firm of Paul Lester Weiner. In the years 1947-56 Sert became president of CIAM, helping to develop and promote the planning theories of the Modern Movement. He had edited ?Can our Cities Survive?? for CIAM in 1942. His own urban housing projects attempted to achieve a balance between various factors ? people and cars; the number of dwellings in relation to support services; ideas of community and privacy. In 1953, on the recommendation of Walter Gropius, Sert was appointed Dean of the Faculty of the Graduate School of Design and Chairman and Professor of Architecture at Harvard University. He went on to establish the Urban Design Program at Harvard, the first formal professional urban planning degree course in the United States. In 1955 he established his own office in Cambridge, Massachusetts; subsequently he went into partnership with Huson Jackson and Ronald Gourley. During the 1960s and 70s Sert, Jackson and Associates designed numerous private houses, offices and university buildings, including the Martin Luther King Elementary School, Cambridge and the Undergraduate Science Center, Harvard University. In 1981 Sert was awarded the AIA Gold Medal.

Major buildings / works:
Spanish National Pavilion (including Picasso’s Guernica), World’s Fair, Paris, 1937.
Plan for Bogota, Colombia (with Le Corbusier), 1951.
United States Embassy, Baghdad, Iraq, 1955.
Martin Luther King Elementary School, Cambridge, Mass., 1966.
Undergraduate Science Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1970.
Joan MtrO Foundation, Barcelona, 1972-75.

Bibliography:
Josep Lluis Sert and CLAM, Can our Cities Survive? Harvard, 1942.
Josep Lluis Sert and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt (eds.), The Shape of Cities, Cambridge, Mass., 1957.
Knud Bastlund, Jose Luis Sert, Zurich and London, 1967.
Jauma Freixa, Josep LI. Sert, Barcelona, 1979.

Filed Under S, Y on April 14, 2008

Tagged With , , ,

Related Posts:

Comments

Leave a Reply