ARCHITECTS

(April 14, 1927 – July 1981)

Karl Lauri Christer Barlund was a Finnish architect, a 1953 graduate of Helsinki’s University of Technology. Barlund moved to the USA in 1953 on an Eliel Saarinen scholarship to study for his Master’s degree in Architecture at Saarinen’s Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. He was one of the first recipients of the Eliel Saarinen scholarship. While studying at Cranbrook he also worked with Eero Saarinen. Barlund returned to Finland for five years, working with architects and local government.

The post-war boom in America lured Barlund back in 1959, with his wife Anna Christina, and young son. First, he worked with the renowned industrial designers Sundberg-Ferar in Michigan. Then in 1960, Barlund moved to the west coast and worked with modernist architects A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons who were in the midst of their collaboration with housing developer Joseph Eichler, part of Christer Barlund’s responsibility during his three years with the firm.  

Barlund and his family moved to Palm Springs in 1963 where he worked for the Palm Desert building designers Patten & Wild, who were busy designing custom homes in the area.  Several homes for Patten & Wild feature drawings that bear Barlund’s name: the Dillman Residence in Thunderbird Heights and the Hurd Residence at Tamarisk Country Club. In 1967 he moved his family to Honolulu to take advantage of that city’s late-1960s building boom and worked with major architecture firms on hi-rise apartments, offices, resorts, and airports.