Bertrand Goldberg's vision for Chicago: Marina City

Bertrand Goldberg (July 17, 1913 – October 8, 1997) was an American architect based in Chicago, active from 1937. He studied at Harvard in 1930, at the Cambridge School of Landscape Architecture, an institution later integrated into the same university. In 1932, he decided to travel to Berlin to study at the Bauhaus until its closure in 1933, a period during which he worked in the studio of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. After the closure of the Bauhaus and amid increasing political repression in Germany, he moved briefly to Paris before returning to Chicago, where he collaborated with renowned modern architects such as Keck and Keck, Paul Schweikher and Howard T. Fisher. He earned his degree from the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1934.

In 1937, he opened his studio, where he applied what he learned at the Bauhaus and the studio of Mies van der Rohe, as can be seen in his first prefabricated projects for the Federal Government in Suit, Maryland, and Lafayette, Indiana, built between 1937 and 1944. His approach to architecture was characterized from the beginning by a tendency toward unconventional structural solutions in residential, institutional, and industrial projects.

One of his first significant commissions was in 1938, for the North Pole ice cream chain: demountable structures with roofs supported by tension rods connected to a single central pillar. In parallel, he explored prototypes of prefabricated housing, mobile vaccination laboratories, and laminated wood railway cars for military use, conducting an experimental search for common materials such as plywood and concrete.

Between 1945 and 1948, he designed the Stanfad prefabricated restrooms, with gently curved forms, and developed a series of railcars for the Pressed Steel Car Company, constructed from plastic materials, which formally and materially anticipated his future concrete towers. These industrial exercises were a response to his collaborations with figures such as R. Buckminster Fuller and his friendship with Josef Albers.

In 1959, he designed his most important work: Marina City, a complex of two unique mixed-use towers on the north bank of the Chicago River, built between 1961 and 1964. The project consists of two sixty-story twin towers (designed for housing and spiral parking) with a base that houses a theater, retail spaces, offices, an ice rink, a bowling alley, a river marina, and connections to an active railway line. The towers, with their distinctive multi-lobed forms, have been commonly described as "corncobs" and constitute a distinctive landmark in the city's skyline. This complex demonstrated the potential of reinforced concrete and mixed-use typologies as drivers of urban regeneration. Over time, the complex's uses have transformed, largely retaining its original spatial and structural logic: the theater is currently the home of the Chicago House of Blues, the office serves as a hotel, and the ice rink has been replaced by a restaurant.

Following the international success of Marina City, Goldberg expanded his scope to include large-scale institutional commissions, particularly hospitals, such as the now-defunct Prentice Women's Hospital for Northwestern University, the SUNY Medical and Scientific Complex at Stony Brook, and Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix. He also designed educational facilities and public housing developments, such as River City and the Hilliard Homes complex, both in Chicago.

Beginning in the 1970s, Goldberg focused his work on more complex urban proposals, both from a design and theoretical perspective. He wrote on urban, historical, and cultural themes with a critical and progressive perspective, proposing solutions that integrate social, technical, and spatial aspects. His legacy is preserved in the Bertrand Goldberg Archive, housed at the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries of the Art Institute of Chicago, containing drawings, photographs, correspondence, and audiovisual materials that reflect a career dedicated to conceiving architecture as an engine of social transformation.