Joseph Sert, FAIA

Year Awarded: 1981
Born: July 01, 1902; Barcelona, Spain


Projects
• 1975: Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona
• 1973: Science Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
• 1964: Maeght Foundation, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France
• 1960: American Embassy, Baghdad
• 1958: Spanish Pavilion, World Exhibition, Brussels
• 1937: Spanish Pavilion, World Exhibition, Paris
• 1934: Roca, Barcelona


Biography
Born Josep Lluís Sert i López, Joseph Sert’s interest in architecture began when he was a child, inspired by the work of Antonio Gaudi. He studied at the Barcelona School of Architecture and graduated in 1929.

After working with Le Corbusier, Sert opened a practice in Barcelona. In 1937, he designed the Spanish Pavilion for the World’s Fair in Paris. In 1939, he moved to the United States to work at the firm Pal Lest Weiner.

From 1947 to 1956, Sert served as president for the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in Spain. He worked at Yale University in 1952 as a visiting professor, and in 1953 he became dean of the Graduate School of Design and professor of architecture at Harvard University. While he was there, he founded the Urban Design Program, a formal urban planning course, and established a Cambridge firm with some friends that eventually became Sert, Jackson & Gourley, which designed offices, university buildings, and homes in the 1960s and 1970s.

Among other commissions, Sert designed the Science Center at Harvard, the Miró Foundation in Barcelona, the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, and the Spanish Pavilion at more than one World’s Fair.