Design Profession: Architect
Building Types: Civic, Commercial, Educational, Residential
Tivadar Balogh was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Hungarian immigrants. While at Detroit's Cooley High School, he participated in a program for gifted students at the Detroit Institute of the Arts. Following service in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Balogh enrolled at the University of Michigan in the aeronautical engineering program. He attributes a photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater to piquing his interest in architecture and his switch to the architecture school at the university. While at the University of Michigan, Balogh received the Harley, Ellington & Day architectural scholarship and worked for a number of Detroit's best known Modern architectural firms including O'Dell, Hewlett, & Luchenbach and Earl Confer. After graduating from college in 1952, Balogh reenlisted in the navy, serving during the Korean War until 1954.
Upon his return to Ann Arbor, Balogh spent a year working in the architectural office of modernist George Brigham before leaving to join the firm of another Ann Arbor architect, Robert Metcalf, where he worked for six years. In 1960 he left Metcalf to work for the firms of Shreve, Walker and Associates and W. B. Ford before starting his own firm in Plymouth, Michigan, in1961. Balogh began working as a visiting lecturer at the University of Michigan's School of Architecture and Design in 1956 and as an instructor for the university's extension service from 1964 to 1970. He was later named an adjunct professor. During his tenure at the school, Balogh taught classes in communication skills, visual studies, construction materials and methods, building and comprehensive design, and graphics. In 1973 he received the university's Sol King Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Out of eight hundred entries Progressive Architecture magazine awarded Balogh its 1957 residential design award for his personal residence. The judges included Marcel Breuer, Gordon Bunschaft, and Harry Weese. More than 150 of the 200 projects Balogh designed were built in Michigan, Illinois, and Arizona. Balogh is considered a member of the Ann Arbor school, a group of architects associated with the University of Michigan that practiced in the Ann Arbor area after World War II.