Victor Gruen & Associates is a planning team of architects and engineers with headquarters i Los Angeles and offices in Detroit, New York, 5 Minneapolis, and San Francisco. Actively erf aged in projects in almost every state as well as abroas, the Gruen organization was cho en as architect for Southdale in 1952 The five partners of the firm, Victor Gruen 10 Karl van Leuven jr R. L. Baumfeld, Edgardo Contini, and Ben S. Southland, were brought together in the common belief that individual ingenuity coupled with disciplined teamwork offers the best approach to today's complex 15 problems in planning