William Wilson Wurster, born in California in 1895, earned his degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1919. After obtaining his license in 1922, he worked briefly for firms in Sacramento and with Delano & Aldrich in New York, then opened the firm William W. Wurster in California in 1924. He gained national recognition early in his career with an award-winning design for the Gregory farmhouse (Scotts Valley, 1927), and became the most well-known modernist architect in the Bay Area.

Wurster’s work, primarily residential during this time, was widely exhibited and published. The Colby house (Berkeley, 1931) and Voss house (Big Sur, 1931) were included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. At the same time, Wurster was developing friendships with landscape architects Lockwood deForest and Thomas Church. Though he worked with both men, his collaborative relationship with Church was particularly strong, and he designed a house for the landscape architect in 1931. During a 1937 trip to Europe, Wurster and Church met and befriended Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, who became an influence on both men’s work. He later collaborated on projects with Landscape Architect Lawrence Halprin.

In 1939, Wurster met the public housing and community planning expert Catherine Bauer, and the two were married the following year. In 1943, Wurster went to study planning at Harvard. Both Yale and MIT invited him to teach, and by 1944 he had become Dean of Architecture at MIT, a post he held until 1950. Catherine Bauer Wurster taught planning at Harvard University during the same period. In 1944, Wurster formed a partnership with former employee Theodore Bernardi, and with the addition of Donn Emmons, also a former employee, in 1945, the firm became Wurster, Bernardi, and Emmons (WBE). During his years at MIT, Wurster spent only vacations in San Francisco and Bernardi and Emmons effectively ran the firm.

Wurster returned to the Bay Area in 1950 to become Dean of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, a position he held until his retirement in 1963. In 1959 he brought the departments of architecture, landscape architecture, city and regional planning, and design together to become the College of Environmental Design. WBE incorporated in 1963 and continued to produce award-winning designs, receiving the American Institute of Architects’ Architectural Firm Award in 1965. All three partners had been named Fellows of the AIA by this time, and Wurster was later honored with the AIA Gold Medal Award for lifetime achievement in 1969.

After Wurster’s death in 1973, the Bernardi and Emmons continued running the firm until the mid-1980s.

Sources: Montgomery, Roger. “William Wilson Wurster and the College of Environmental Design.” Inside the Large Small House: The Residential Design Legacy of William W. Wurster. Berkeley: The Regents of the University of California, 1995. Peters, Richard C. “WWWurster.” The Journal of Architectural Education. 33 (1979): 36-41 Treib, Marc, ed. An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Considered one of the founders of American housing policy, Catherine Krouse Bauer Wurster was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1905. She attended Vail-Deane School and then Vassar College. In her junior year she transferred to the School of Architecture at Cornell University, but returned to Vassar to graduate in 1926. The next few years were devoted to research and writing about housing and city planning and travel abroad to study European housing. For the next decade in the company of Mary Simkovitch, Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, and many others engaged in the study of housing and city planning, she found that concern for the underprivileged, interest in the relationship between man and his environment, and a fervor for reform in public policy was to guide her active and influential life. During these years she served as executive secretary of the Regional Planning Association of America, of the Labor Housing Conference, and of the Housing Committee of the American Federation of Labor, and wrote her now classic 1934 book Modern Housing. Its synthesis of social, economic, political, technological and architectural insights, established her as an authority in housing and a leader in New Deal housing policy. In 1936 she won the first Guggenheim Foundation award made in architecture or housing. She participated in the preparation, promotion and passage of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937 and served as the first Director of Research and Information for the new United States Public Housing Authority and as adviser to numerous other federal and local agencies. In January, 1940, she came to the University of California at Berkeley as Rosenberg Lecturer in Public Social Services and in August of that year was married to William Wilson Wurster, a prominent San Francisco architect. When they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1944, C.B. Wurster became a lecturer in the Department of Regional Planning at Harvard University. She also became Vice President of the National Housing Conference, and continued to serve as a board member or officer of the National Committee on Housing, the Committee on the Hygiene of Housing of the American Public Health Association, the Boston and Massachusetts Housing Associations, and the International Federation of Housing and Town Planning. During these years, she presided over a joint committee that drafted “A Housing Program for Now and Later” for the National Association of Housing Officials and the National Public Housing Conference, a significant document in the long campaign for the adoption of the Housing Act of 1949. In 1950 the Wurster’s returned to Berkeley when William Wurster became Dean of the School of Architecture at Berkeley. Catherine became a lecturer, later Professor, in the University's Department of City and Regional Planning, a position she held until her death. During these years, she was consultant to the United Nations, travelled, wrote, and advised on housing problems in developing countries, and served as adviser to the U. S. Public Health Service, the Housing and Home Finance Agency, and the Census Bureau. She also served in various capacities in the American Planning and Civic Association, the Democratic Advisory Council, and was made an honorary member of the American Institute of Planners. In 1960 when President Eisenhower appointed a Commission on National Goals, she was invited to prepare the section on the urban environment which appears in Goals For Americans. In 1963 she organized a major conference on “The Metropolitan Future” as a part of the University series on California and the Challenge of Growth. When she died in 1964, she was editing the papers of this conference, contributing to the California Governor's Advisory Commission on Housing Problems, and serving as Associate Dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. Catherine Bauer (she used her maiden name for professional purposes) was a prolific writer and popular lecturer. “She accepted honors with modesty and would turn quickly and cheerfully to her private business--discovering the facts, asking about the policy, and urging action--always action which is the test of policy.” She commanded the respect and admiration of architects, planners, sociologists, and economists for her ability to think sharply, clearly, and incisively, and for a far-reaching knowledge in a wide range of fields. Sources: W. L. Wheaton, T. J. Kent, Jr., M. M. Webber. In Memorium, University of California, Berkeley. Accessed 7 Apr 2016 Oberlander, H. Peter and Eva Newbrun. Houser : the Life and Work of Catherine Bauer. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999.