Partners: network

Rudolf Lothar Baumfeld, Edgardo Contini, Frank Owen Gehry, Victor David Gruen, Reinhard Lesser, Immanuel H. Lewin, Thomas M. Mayne, Dan Saxon Palmer, Cesar Pelli, Thomas L. Sutton Jr., Ted Tokio Tanaka, Zelma Gussin Wilson

Active 1951-1968

Firm Notes

The Gruen Associates Website (accessed 06/29/2005) indicated that the firm had been formed in 1946; the American Architects Directory (1956) noted its establishment in 1951; Baumfeld became a Partner in 1963.

In 1956, Victor Gruen Associates had offices in Beverly Hills, CA, New York, NY, Detroit, MI, San Francisco, CA, and Minneapolis, MN.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the firm developed a reputation in Los Angeles for hiring a diverse workforce, including women and people of diverse ethnicities. It became an important incubator of talent beyond the limited pool of white men.

The Los Angeles Conservancy.org stated of Victor Gruen Associates: "By the 1960s, Victor Gruen Associates was an internationally recognized firm, conceiving Modern master plans for cities around the world. By the 1970s, the firm had designed over fifty shopping malls throughout the country. By 1978, Gruen, a socialist, renounced the American retail mall as a debasement of his original urban planning ideas. He spent the latter part of his life in his native Austria and died in Vienna in 1980." (See LA Conservancy.org, "Victor Gruen Associates," accessed 05/04/2023.)

PCAD id: 56