Walter Netsch

Walter Netsch (born February 23, 1920, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died June 15, 2008, Chicago) was an American architect whose geometrically complex buildings, designed according to his own “field theory,” have attracted both admiration and controversy. He was affiliated with the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) for most of his career, working on such notable projects as the Cadet Chapel (1963) at the United States Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the Inland Steel Building (1958) in Chicago. He also designed libraries at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the University of Chicago (both 1970), as well as the master plan for the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle campus (completed in phases throughout the 1960s; later the University of Illinois Chicago).

Early life

Netsch was born to Walter Andrew Netsch, Sr., a meatpacking executive, and Anna Calista Netsch (née Smith), who came from a wealthy East Coast family. Walter Netsch, Sr., had a humble upbringing in the German immigrant enclave of Manchester, New Hampshire, and met his future wife while waiting tables during his studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The couple became Christian Scientists, which Walter Netsch, Jr., later explained was an avant-garde interest at the time. Netsch grew up on the South Side of Chicago alongside his younger sister, Nan Netsch (later Kerr), in a household steeped in an appreciation for the arts, regularly attending classical music concerts, museum exhibitions, and other cultural outings. He was exposed to innovations in modern design during the Century of Progress Exposition (1933–34) and inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie and Blossom houses in the Hyde Park neighborhood while riding his bike to the public library. Netsch described being enamored with the buildings and wrote an essay entitled “What Is Modern Architecture” for a high-school class.

Education and early career

In 1943 Netsch graduated from the architecture program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and enlisted in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Following his service, he was hired by L. Morgan Yost, a residential architect based in the Chicago suburbs. From there he joined SOM to design permanent buildings and housing for the town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which had been designed and constructed by the firm in the 1940s for workers on the Manhattan Project and their families. Netsch then moved to a position at the San Francisco branch of SOM and worked on designs for air bases in Okinawa, which was occupied by the United States at this time, and Japan.

Inland Steel Building

In the early 1950s Netsch transferred to the Chicago office of SOM and became a partner in 1955. One of his first projects in the city was the design for the corporate headquarters of Inland Steel, which he conceptualized and architect Bruce Graham, who later became known for his work on the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower), completed in 1958. The Inland Steel Building features a 19-story office tower with a green-tinted glass curtain wall and a 25-story service unit, which is sheathed in stainless steel panels (in homage to the company) and houses the building’s mechanical functions. The service tower allows for unobstructed space in the office building, the flexibility and openness of which were qualities promoted by the likes of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, principles that Graham fully embraced.

Cadet Chapel

Netsch, however, often shunned strict adherence to the architectural programs of other practitioners, and his complicated, modular designs departed visibly in their appearance from the austere structures advanced by other members of SOM. The contrast is especially apparent in the campus of the United States Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs. The most distinctive structure amid SOM’s minimalist cubic buildings remains Netsch’s Cadet Chapel. Completed in 1963, the chapel suggests a line of fighter jets pointed toward the sky through its complex tetrahedral structure and use of aluminum, the same material used to construct planes. The chapel initially elicited polarized responses. Architecture critic Blair Kamin wrote in Netsch’s obituary for Architectural Record that the building was viewed by many as “a temple to America’s military-industrial complex.” Later, however, it was fêted with an American Institute of Architects 25-Year Award and has been recognized as “the most visited man-made tourist attraction in Colorado.”

Field theory and the University of Illinois Chicago campus

The experimentation with form in the Cadet Chapel culminated in Netsch’s development of what he termed “field theory.” This complicated methodology is characterized by intricate, latticed geometric patterns, which Netsch described in a 1979 paper:

Field theory architecture is an ordering system based upon mathematical proportion which combines the programmatic needs of use and the aesthetic rules of form and proportion.…The primary ordering systems in field theory are the combination of orthogonal (right angle patterns) and diagonal (angular patterns) most often defined by the rotated square. The combination of patterns becomes the field and the variety of patterns results in an endless choice of fields.

1 of 2

2 of 2

Netsch applied this theory to his design for the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle campus (completed in phases throughout the 1960s; later renamed University of Illinois Chicago) using a pattern of rotated squares. This resulted in unusual layouts of the buildings housing the departments of art and architecture, behavioral science, and science and engineering that were so complex and mazelike that they continue to confuse students in the 21st century. In addition to the buildings, Netsch designed public spaces and pedestrian paths as elevated courtyards and walkways. The central plaza was originally called the Great Court and contained an amphitheater, called the Forum, and other forms of seating. The raised pedestrian paths were intended to allow students to traverse campus safely above street traffic and offer shelter on the ground level in inclement weather. The structures were made from concrete and brick, while the buildings had thin darkened windows that earned the campus the nickname “Fortress Illini.” Parts of Netsch’s campus, including the Great Court and elevated walkways, were later demolished to make way for a more traditional quadrangle.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe

Later work and life

Netsch continued to concentrate on institutional projects, notably the Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago and the University Library at Northwestern University (both 1970), both of which remain campus landmarks and central hubs of collegiate life. He also designed the home for himself and his wife, politician and law professor Dawn Clark Netsch, whom he married in 1963. The couple had met when she requested to use his house for a political fundraiser. The Netsch residence was completed in 1974 and in 2023 received landmark designation.

Although Netsch’s persistent commitment to his own vision courted conflict with other members of SOM, particularly Graham, he nonetheless worked at the firm until his retirement in 1979, after which he continued to consult. Having been appointed to the Chicago Park District board by Mayor Harold Washington, he became board president in 1986 and worked on a large-scale reorganization of the park system until his resignation in 1989. Netsch died of pneumonia in Chicago in 2008 at the age of 88.

Legacy

Reception of Netsch’s buildings has shifted over time. Many projects that had earlier garnered criticism underwent a critical reevaluation. Kamin wrote in Netsch’s Chicago Tribune obituary, “Many scholars now argue that his body of work represents a significant break from the boxy modernism of the 1950s and 1960s and anticipated the unorthodox, computer-generated shapes of such contemporary architects as Frank Gehry of Los Angeles.” In an interview with St. Louis Post-Dispatch during his wife’s gubernatorial campaign in 1994, Netsch remarked that opinions of his work had changed so often that he was no longer interested in what legacy he was leaving in architecture.