Sven Birkerts ( born September 21, 1951 ) is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry.

Birkerts is the Director of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and the editor of AGNI, the literary journal.

His father is noted architect Gunnar Birkerts.

Gunnar Birkerts (, born January 17, 1925 in Riga, Latvia ) is a Latvian-American architect who, for most of his career, was based in the metropolitan area of Detroit, Michigan.

His son is noted literary critic Sven Birkerts.

Gunnar Birkerts is noted for designing the new building of National Library of Latvia in Riga, currently under construction.

The Kemper Museum ’ s 23, 200-square-foot concrete, steel and glass building, constructed from 1992 to 1994 at a cost of $ 6. 6 million, was designed by architect Gunnar Birkerts.

Birkerts joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1959 and taught until 1990.

*" Gunnar Birkerts papers 1930-2002 ", at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan

Aside from the national library in Riga, Birkerts has built a number of notable buildings in the United States including the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, Corning Glass Museum, Modern Art Museum of Houston, the University of Iowa College of Justice, and the U. S. Embassy in Venezuela, etc.

* Birkerts, Gunnar, Process and Expression in Architectural Form, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK 1994 ; ISBN 0-8061-2642-6

* Birkerts, Gunnar, Subterranean Urban Systems, Industrial Development Division-Institute of Science and Technology, University of Michigan 1974

Gunnar Birkerts was selected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1970, and a Fellow of the Latvian Architect Association in 1971.

G. Birkerts received several awards for his architectural work, notably the Arnold V. Brunner Memorial Prize, Michigan Arts Award, awards by the Michigan Union of Architects, the American Union of Architects in Detroit and student organization Tau Sigma Delta.

* Kaiser, Kay, The Architecture of Gunnar Birkerts, American Institute of Architects Press, Washington DC 1989 ; ISBN 1-55835-051-9

* Gunnar Birkerts Architects, Inc.

* St. Peter's Lutheran Church, by Gunnar Birkerts

Previous Hopwood winners include Brett Ellen Block, Max Apple, Lorna Beers, Sven Birkerts, John Malcolm Brinnin, John Ciardi, Tom Clark, Lyn Coffin, Cid Corman, Christopher Paul Curtis, Mary Gaitskill, Robert Hayden, Garrett Hongo, Lawrence Joseph, Jane Kenyon, Laura Kasischke, Elizabeth Kostova, Arthur Miller, Howard Moss, Davi Napoleon, Frank O ' Hara, Marge Piercy, William Craig Rice, Ari Roth, Davy Rothbart, Betty Smith, Ron Sproat, Keith Waldrop, Rosmarie Waldrop, Edmund White, Nancy Willard, Beth Tanenhaus Winsten, and Maritta Wolff.

Core faculty has included fiction writers David Gates, Amy Hempel, Jill McCorkle, Sheila Kohler, Martha Cooley, Askold Melnyczuk, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, and Alice Mattison ; nonfiction writers Sven Birkerts, Susan Cheever, Phillip Lopate, Tom Bissell, and George Scialabba ; and poets April Bernard, Major Jackson, Timothy Liu, Amy Gerstler, Mark Wunderlich, and Ed Ochester.

Following Rector's death in August 2007, Sven Birkerts took over as acting director of the Writing Seminars.

* Birkerts, Sven Postmodern Picaresque.

Birkerts was born in Pontiac, Michigan.

The critic Sven Birkerts argued that the unfinished state of The Curse of Caste ( Collins died before completing it ) and its poor literary quality should disqualify it as the first building block of African-American literature.

Through apprenticeship with Soleri and with Gunnar Birkerts, he obtained registration as an architect and opened his practice in 1974.

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, designed by Gunnar Birkerts, 1992-1994.

Gunnar Birkerts was raised in Latvia but fled ahead of the advancing Russian army toward the end of the Second World War.

Birkerts came to the United States and worked initially for Perkins and Will, then for Eero Saarinen, and finally for Minoru Yamasaki before opening his own office in the Detroit suburbs.

Birkerts initially practiced in the partnership Birkerts and Staub ; after that partnership broke up the firm became Gunnar Birkerts and Associates.

The ACSA ( Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture ) honored Birkerts with the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award in 1989-90.

Birkerts now maintains an architectural office in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Col. Clifton Lisle, of Chester Springs, who headed the Troop Committee for much of its second and third decades, is now an honorary member.

She is in Madame Tussard's Waxworks in London, a princess of the Kiowa tribe and an honorary colonel in many states.

The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not actually the head of a monastery.

In the German Evangelical Church the German title of Abt ( abbot ) is sometimes bestowed, like the French abbé, as an honorary distinction, and survives to designate the heads of some monasteries converted at the Reformation into collegiate foundations.

After the separation of the two offices the position of Astronomer Royal has been largely honorary, though he remains available to advise the Sovereign on astronomical and related scientific matters, and the office is of great prestige.

He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi honorary band fraternity.

It is also the site of a Mexican honorary consulate.

1678, Harvard College ; A. M. 1681, honorary doctorate 1710, University of Glasgow ) was a socially and politically influential New England Puritan minister, prolific author and pamphleteer ; he is often remembered for his role in the Salem witch trials.

Guest holds an honorary doctorate from and is a member of the board of trustees for Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Leary received an honorary doctorate and spoke briefly at his alma mater's undergraduate commencement ceremony on May 16, 2005 ; he is thus credited as " Dr. Denis Leary " on the cover of his 2009 book, Why We Suck.

An honorary doctorate is a doctoral degree awarded for service to the institution or the wider community.

Australia is represented in Finland through its embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, and through an honorary consulate in Helsinki.

And so Douglass is the only man to receive an honorary membership posthumously.

Lineker is now honorary vice-president of Leicester City, along with former players Gordon Banks and Peter Shilton.

The influence of Ann Radcliffe is also detectable in Poe's " The Oval Portrait " ( 1842 ), including an honorary mention of her name in the text of the story.

The second interpretation, that it was simply an honorary title, " Mrs. Prophet " as it were, is likely.

Japan is accredited to Barbados from its Embassy in Port of Spain ( Trinidad and Tobago ) and an honorary consulate in Bridgetown.

In 1899, Takamine was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Engineering by what is now the University of Tokyo.

He is also an honorary fellow of his alma mater, St Peter's College, Oxford.

A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a monarch or other political leader for service to the monarch or country, especially in a military capacity.

When he was two years old, his father was killed in a railway accident, and his name was changed to Karl Friedrich Benz in remembrance of his father .< ref > Karl Benz family gravestone Karl is the spelling of his first name on all of his official personal and municipal documents throughout his life, such as birth, school, honorary doctorate, the Baden State Metal certificate, and on his family grave marker as displayed to the right.

Australia is represented in Luxembourg through its embassy in Brussels ( Belgium ) and an honorary consulate in Luxembourg City.

Luxembourg is represented in Australia through the embassy of the Netherlands in Canberra and through an honorary consulate in East Lindfield.

* Luxembourg is represented in Canada through its embassy in Washington, D. C. ( USA ), and 4 honorary consulates ( in Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver ).

Estonia is represented in Luxembourg through its embassy in Brussels ( Belgium ) and an honorary consulate in Luxembourg.