1952 in architecture

Lever House, the seminal International Style skyscraper

The year 1952 in architecture involved some significant events.

Buildings

• April – Stockwell Garage, designed by Adie, Button and Partners, with engineer A. E. Beer, is opened by London Transport.
• December 15 – The Sands Hotel, designed by Wayne McAllister, is opened on the Las Vegas Strip (demolished 30 June 1996).
• Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects, completed in the Brush Park section of Detroit, Michigan.
• Edificio Miguel E. Abed completed in Mexico City using the latest technology for earthquake engineering.
• Kotelnicheskaya Embankment apartments completed in the central Tagansky District in Moscow, and one of the "Seven Sisters".
• Lever House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, is completed at 390 Park Avenue in New York City.
• Liljestrand House in Honolulu, Hawaii, designed by Vladimir Ossipoff, is completed.
• Säynätsalo Town Hall in Finland, designed by Alvar Aalto, is completed.
• Unité d'Habitation in Marseille, designed by Le Corbusier, is completed.
• Pedregulho Housing Complex in Rio de Janeiro, designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy, is inaugurated.
• United Nations Secretariat Building, designed by French architect Le Corbusier and Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, is completed.
• Dorton Arena ("Paraboleum"), Raleigh, North Carolina, designed by Matthew Nowicki (died 1950), is built.

Awards

• AIA Gold Medal – Auguste Perret.
• Royal Gold Medal – George Grey Wornum.

Births

• February 15 – Marco Piva, Italian architect
• July 25 – Eduardo Souto de Moura, Portuguese architect
• December 15 – David Marks, British architect (d. 2017)

Deaths

Stockwell Garage – bravura use of reinforced concrete

• December 26 – Robert Atkinson, English architect (born 1883)