Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Gordon Bunshaft, Natalie Griffin de Blois
Lever House, New York, New York
1950–1952
Paper, wood, plastic, plexiglass, metal, aluminum and paint
Not on view
Natalie Griffin de Blois’s design contributions to modern architecture were often overshadowed by her collaborator, Gordon Bunshaft, at SOM [Skidmore Owings & Merrill], the architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm where they both worked. Nevertheless, de Blois was the first woman at the firm to obtain the role of senior designer and was later promoted to associate partner. In her thirty years at SOM, de Blois oversaw the design and construction of some of the most influential examples of mid-century architecture in New York, including the corporate offices of the Lever House, Union Carbide Building, and Pepsi-Cola Headquarters (seen in the video Overexposed on the opposite side of this gallery).
2023
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International Style
A style of modern architecture that emerged in Europe (principally Germany and France) in the 1920s and 1930s. Historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and architect Philip Johnson coined the term International Style to describe this plain, unadorned architecture of rectilinear forms built of steel, reinforced concrete, and glass.
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