Theodore C. Bernardi (1903 - 1990)

Theodore C. Bernardi was born in Korčula,Yugoslavia (then Austria-Hungary), in 1903. A year later, his mother and uncle brought him to the United States to join his father who was already in America. In 1906 the family returned to Yugoslavia where Bernardi attended school until the family once again moved to the U.S. in 1912. Bernardi studied architecture at the University of California, Berkeley; he earned his bachelor's degree in 1924 and stayed at the University for a short time to study at the graduate level. Over the next nine years he complimented his academic studies by working as an architect and draftsman in a number of Bay Area firms, including the office of Timothy Pflueger.

Bernardi obtained his architectural license in 1933, and joined the firm of William W. Wurster the following year where, during the next eight years, he led the design and construction of major Wurster office projects. Bernardi directed his independent architectural practice in the Wurster office in San Francisco from 1942-1944. During that time his projects included more than a dozen government housing projects. When William Wurster left the Bay Area in 1942 for Harvard University to study and later become Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT from 1944 to 1950, Bernardi directed the Wurster office in San Francisco. In late 1945 Donn Emmons joined Wurster & Bernardi (formed in 1944) establishing the firm Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons (WBE). Bernardi was Principal-in-Charge of many major WBE projects, including the Schuckl Canning Company office building in Sunnyvale (1942), the Master Plan for University of California Santa Cruz (1962), the Ice House renovation in San Francisco’s North Waterfront (1967), and the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley (located in Kensington). His own home in Sausalito (1950) won an AIA Award of Merit in 1956.

In addition to his work with WBE, Bernardi was a lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Architecture between 1954 and 1971. In 1962 he was elected to Fellowship in the American Institute of Architects, and in 1965 WBE won the AIA Architectural Firm Award Medal. Though his role in the firm became less active during the 1970s, Bernardi continued to work on projects until his death in 1990.