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 thr...
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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. He met Bauer attending the Harvard Graduate School of Design, both taking classes from the German Socialist city planner Martin Wagner. Both Bauer and Wurster withstood accusations of disloyalty during the Red Scare of the 1950s.
Wurster...
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