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(b Copenhagen, Sept 11, 1743; d Frederiksdal, Copenhagen, June 4, 1809).

Danish painter, designer and architect. His paintings reveal both Neo-classical and Romantic interests and include history paintings as well as literary and mythological works. The variety of his subject-matter reflects his wide learning, a feature further evidenced by the broad range of his creative output. In addition to painting, he produced decorative work, sculpture and furniture designs, as well as being engaged as an architect. Successfully combining both intellectual and imaginative powers, he came to be fully appreciated only in the 1980s.

He studied at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen (1764–72), and in 1767 he assisted Johan Edvard Mandelberg (1730–86) in painting the domed hall of the Fredensborg Slot with scenes from the Homeric epic the Iliad. In 1772 he was granted a five-year travelling scholarship from the Kunstakademi to study in Rome. During his Roman sojourn he extensively copied works of art from the period of antiquity up to that of the Carracci family. His friendships with the Danish painter Jens Juel, the Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel and the Swiss painter Johann Heinrich Fuseli placed him among artists who were in the mainstream of a widespread upheaval in European art. In these years Abildgaard developed both Neo-classical and Romantic tastes; his masterpiece of the period is ...

(b Puławy, June 1756; d Florence, Feb 8, 1841).

Polish architect and writer, also active in Italy. He probably studied in Rome in the late 1770s and returned to Italy in 1785–6 under the aegis of Stanisław Kostka Potocki, a collector and amateur architect with whom he collaborated throughout his life. In 1786 Aigner and Potocki refronted the church of St Anna, Warsaw, using a giant composite order on high pedestals. The political turmoil of the 1790s disrupted Aigner’s career, but during his second phase of creativity (1797–1816) he won fame through his work on the great estate of the Czartoryski family at Puławy, on the Vistula west of Lublin, the most important centre of cultural life in Poland during the Enlightenment. Aigner had already erected the Marynka Palace there in 1790, a variation on the Petit Trianon at Versailles, France, and from 1798 he began to add ornamental buildings to go with the new Picturesque layout of the Puławy gardens: a Chinese pavilion, a Gothick house and a peripheral Temple of the Sibyl with a shallow dome. In ...

American organization dedicated to improving the quality of architectural education. Incorporated in 1916 by the architect Lloyd Warren (1867–1922), the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (BAID) was an outgrowth of the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects (SBAA; 1894–1942) established by his brother Whitney Warren (1864–1943) with Thomas Hastings and Ernest Flagg who had all studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and were nationally recognized American architects. BAID was dedicated to the improvement of architectural education by providing a centralized location for the distribution and judging of design problems. Architecture schools and private ateliers located throughout the United States developed projects based on the programs created by BAID. The student work was then sent to the headquarters in New York to be judged. An award system of medals and mentions cited the work considered most deserving by the jury of distinguished architects. The award winning projects published in ...

(b Hamburg, April 14, 1868; d Berlin, Feb 27, 1940).

German architect, designer and painter. Progressing from painting and graphics to product design and architecture, Behrens achieved his greatest successes with his work for the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), in which he reconciled the Prussian Classicist tradition with the demands of industrial fabrication.

After attending the Realgymnasium in Altona, he began his painting studies in 1886 at the Kunstakademie in Karlsruhe. From there he moved to Düsseldorf, where he studied with Ferdinand Brütt. In December 1889 Behrens married Lilli Krämer, and the following year the couple moved to Munich, where he continued his studies with Hugo Kotschenreiter (1854–1908). Behrens was one of the founder-members of the Munich Secession (see Secession, §1) in 1893 and, shortly afterwards, a founder of the more progressive Freie Vereinigung Münchener Künstler, with Otto Eckmann, Max Slevogt, Wilhelm Trübner and Lovis Corinth. He also joined the circle associated with the magazine Pan, which included Otto Julius Bierbaum, Julius Meier-Graefe, Franz Blei, Richard Dehmel and Otto Eckmann....

(b Salzburg, May 1, 1753; d Prague, June 25, 1829).

Austrian painter, printmaker, draughtsman, illustrator and teacher, active in Bohemia. He was taught by his father, the sculptor and painter Josef Bergler the elder (1718–88), and, during his stay in Italy, by Martin Knoller in Milan and Anton von Maron in Rome. An accomplished portrait painter, he was employed as official painter by bishops and cardinals at Passau and painted a number of altarpieces in Austria and especially in Bohemia. He helped establish the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague (1800), which placed a new emphasis on draughtsmanship, composition and Classical subjects and models. As the first Director of the Academy, Bergler won new academic prestige for art in Bohemia and, for himself, a privileged position in obtaining commissions such as the Curtain at the Estates Theatre (sketches, 1803–4; Prague, N.G., Convent of St Agnes). He also published albums of engravings intended as models (Compositions and Sketches...

(b Rome, Oct 30, 1836; d Milan, June 28, 1914).

Italian architect, teacher, restorer and writer. Boito was an important figure in many ways in the cultural life of Italy, and especially Milan, in the second half of the 19th century. He not only taught at the Accademia di Brera and the Istituto Tecnico Superiore for nearly 50 years but also took part in competitions (both as competitor and adjudicator), wrote articles on architecture and restoration for newspapers and periodicals, as well as numerous reports for private individuals and the government, and was active in numerous professional associations. He also served on numerous commissions, particularly after his appointment as Director of the Accademia di Brera in 1897.

Giuliana Ricci

Boito entered the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice in 1850 and won a prize there in 1852. In 1854 he entered the Studio Matematico at the Università degli Studi in Padua, and in 1855 he qualified as a professional architect. In ...

(b Feluy, Jan 10, 1849; d Ghent, Jan 11, 1920).

Belgian architect and writer. He trained as a civil engineer under Adolphe Pauli at the Ecole Spéciale de Génie Civil of the State University of Ghent. As a student he came into contact with the Belgian Gothic Revival movement centred on Jean-Baptiste Bethune and the St Luke School in Ghent, founded by Bethune in 1862. From 1874 Cloquet worked with the publishers Desclée. His early architectural work was similar to that of Bethune, Joris Helleputte and the first generation of St Luke architects. His most important projects were built around the turn of the century: the University Institutes (1896–1905), Ghent, and the Central Post Office (1897–1908), Ghent, the latter with Etienne Mortier (1857–1934), a pupil of Helleputte. In them Cloquet adopted a more eclectic though still predominantly medieval style, also introducing Renaissance motifs. Between 1904 and 1911 he designed a redevelopment plan for the historic centre of Ghent, between the early 14th-century belfry and the 15th-century church of St Michael, known as the Kuip, which was realized before the Ghent World Fair of ...

(b London, Sept 28, 1852; d Tokyo, 1920).

English architect, active in Japan. He was articled to Roger Thomas Smith and then entered the office of William Burges. In 1876 he was awarded the Soane Medallion by the RIBA. In the next year he was appointed the first professor of architecture at the Imperial College of Engineering (now Tokyo University) in Japan, in which role he taught every aspect of architecture and building construction. During this period he was also active as an architect, designing such buildings as the Tokyo Imperial Museum (1877–80; now Tokyo National Museum) and a national banqueting house, Rokumeikan (Deer Cry Pavilion), for the Ministry of Public Works. After leaving his academic and governmental posts, Conder went into private practice and designed many residences, including the Iwasaki residence in Kayacho (1896; see Japan, §III, 5), the Shimazu residence (1915) and the Furukawa residence (1917). His style gradually changed from Gothic to more classical. He is often called the father of Western architecture in Japan, not only on account of his designs but also because of his role in establishing the Western method of architectural higher ...

(b London, Oct 17, 1795; d London, Aug 1, 1885).

English architect, archaeologist and teacher. He was the son of an architect, James Donaldson (c. 1756–1843), and great-nephew of Thomas Leverton. Trained in his father’s office and at the Royal Academy, London, Donaldson travelled in Italy, Greece and Asia Minor from 1818 to 1823 and on his return set up in practice. His first sizeable commission (won in competition) was for the church of the Holy Trinity, Brompton Road, London (1826–9), constructed in the non-archaeological Commissioners’ Gothic style, which was typical of those churches built as a result of the 1818 Act. Other works include the library (1848–9) of University College, Gower Street, London, in a classical style, and University Hall (1848–9; formerly Dr Williams’s Library), Gordon Square, London, in a Tudor Gothic style.

Donaldson’s principal achievements were not as an architect but in his other roles and in his wide range of publications. He was the leader of the ...

(b Paris, Sept 18, 1760; d Thiais, Dec 31, 1834).

French architect, teacher and writer. He was one of the most influential teachers of his time, and his radically rationalist approach, which emphasized priority of function and economy of means, was expressed in analytical writings that remained popular into the 20th century. He studied under Pierre Panseron (fl 1736) and from 1776 in the office of Etienne-Louis Boullée. He also took courses with Julien-David Le Roy at the Académie d’Architecture and participated in competitions under the guidance of Jean-Rodolphe Perronet. He twice came second in the Prix de Rome: in 1779 for a museum and in 1780 for a school. During the 1780s he worked as a draughtsman for Boullée and for the engraver Jean-François Janinet. In 1788 construction began in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, Paris, of his Maison Lathuille, a building with Néo-Grec decoration but with a layout characterized by its extreme simplicity. About 1790 he executed a series of drawings entitled ...

(b Paris, Dec 25, 1834; d Paris, May 17, 1908).

French architect and teacher. He was an outstanding student for 11 years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1853–64), where he was taught by Henri Labrouste and Jules André (1819–90). While there he amassed awards and in 1864 won the Grand-Prix de Rome with a project for a hospice in the Alps. The previous year he had found himself at the head of the huge majority of students at the school who opposed the attempt at reform made by Napoleon III’s government. In 1871 he began teaching architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and from 1894 until his death he taught theory there. Although he agreed with Viollet-le-Duc on the principles of a reasoned and analytical study of architecture, Guadet’s vision of architectural education was founded on the relationship of mutual trust between master and pupil within an independent study-group. He believed that ‘in all things the first studies must be classical’ and rejected the idea that the teaching of aesthetics should be obligatory and founded exclusively on the study of medieval architecture. He was also opposed to the exercises in restoration that were imposed on the ...

[Georges]

(b Ghent, Aug 31, 1852; d Leuven, Feb 22, 1925).

Belgian architect and politician. In 1873 he obtained his diploma in civil engineering at the Ecole Spéciale de Génie Civil of the State University of Ghent. In 1874 he was appointed assistant professor and from 1878 to 1907 was full professor at the Catholic University of Leuven (Ecoles Spéciales de Génie Civil, des Arts et des Manufactures et des Mines), where he developed a training programme in architectural engineering. While a student he met Louis Cloquet and was influenced by the Belgian Gothic Revival movement, which was founded by Jean-Baptiste Bethune, also the founder (in 1862) of the St Luke School, Ghent. Helleputte’s architecture is similar to that of the first generation of St Luke architects in its almost undecorated and rather stern style. Its formal characteristics, modelled on the local Late Gothic style and traditional brick and limestone architecture, are strictly determined by constructional and functional needs. His most important works were built in Leuven for the Catholic University: the Anatomy Theatre (...

(b Alava, Spain, 1810; d Mexico City, 1872).

Spanish architect, painter, and teacher, active in Mexico. He graduated as an architect from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, but also worked in painting, sculpture, and pastel miniatures. In 1836 he worked in Paris under Henri Labrouste, and in 1838 he went to Mexico City, where he opened a school of drawing. As one of the outstanding architects in Mexico at the time, he was made an académico de mérito of the Academia de San Carlos and its director of architecture. His chief work was the Teatro de Santa Anna (1842–1844; later Teatro Nacional; destr. 1901), Mexico City, a neoclassical building that was for a long time the most costly in the city. The principal façade had a portico with four large Corinthian columns rising through two tories. He also rebuilt the dome (1845–1848) of the side chapel of the church of S Teresa la Antigua, Mexico City. His solution was a neoclassical dome supported by a double drum, producing interesting light effects in the interior. The windows of the upper drum, concealed by an incomplete vault rising from the lower one, illuminate paintings around the bottom of the dome. Few of his other works have survived....

(b Thessaloniki, 1811; d Athens, Oct 5, 1886).

Greek architect and teacher. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome (1826–36), and in 1833 he was awarded the first prize in the architectural competition for the design of the Università di Milano. In 1838, after two years in France, he returned to Greece to live in Athens. He exhibited his designs and projects there, among them the monument to the Heroes of the War of Independence of 1821 (unexecuted), for which he had won an award at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. After a period in Turkey (1839–43), he was appointed Director of the Royal School of Fine Arts in Athens in 1844 (later the National Technical University). He was promoted by the wealthiest and most influential of the Greek bourgeoisie, the expatriate merchants who financed most public projects. He contributed enormously to the development of the University and the establishment of Neo-classicism in Greece, both as an ideology and as a viable form of architecture. The austerity and rigour of the Greek version of Neo-classicism corresponded well with his attachment to the classical canon, which he used effectively to create an urban morphology of rhythmical volumes and regulatory grids, an orderly environment that would represent the freedom and progress of modern Greece....

(b Istanbul, Turkey, May 7, 1936; d Berkeley, CA, Dec 7, 1991).

American architectural historian and professor of Turkish birth. Kostof attended Robert College in Istanbul, an American-sponsored university preparatory school. In 1957 he arrived in the USA to study drama at Yale University, yet he switched to art history, studying under noted historian Vincent Scully and earning his doctorate in 1961. After teaching art history at Yale for four years, Kostof moved west in 1965 to the College of Environmental Design at the University of California Berkeley’s Department of Architecture. While he acted as a visiting professor in various places—including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1970), Columbia University (1976) and Rice University (1986–7)—he served as a professor at Berkeley until his untimely death from lymphoma in 1991.

Known as a dynamic and engaging professor, Kostof for decades had taught “A Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism,” a course that laid the foundation for his most well-known text, ...

(b Barnstaple, Jan 18, 1857; d London, July 17, 1931).

English architect, writer and designer. The son of a gilder who was a radical and lay preacher, in 1871 he was apprenticed to a local architect and painter, Alexander Lauder, who gave him a thorough training in the building crafts. In 1879 he was appointed chief clerk to Richard Norman Shaw, whose influence was already evident in Lethaby’s architectural drawings. He remained in this post for the next twelve years (the last two part-time), during which he became increasingly responsible for detailing Shaw’s work, and in doing so made an important contribution to his style (e.g. a chimney-piece of 1883 for Cragside, Rothbury, Northumb.). Lethaby’s independent design work up to the mid-1880s was in the Anglo-Dutch style of the 17th century, as for example in his unexecuted design for a silverware salad bowl, illustrated in The Architect (30 June 1883). About 1885 he began investigating the ways in which beliefs concerning the nature of the cosmos had influenced the forms of ancient architecture. This research resulted in a number of designs with complex and often esoteric iconography, such as his stained-glass window depicting the ...

(b Ghent, Feb 29, 1820; d Cologne, March 19, 1895).

Belgian architect and teacher. He studied architecture and engineering at Ghent University, graduating in 1841, and completed his studies in Munich and in Italy. He worked mainly in Ghent, where he was town architect (1856–67), an early work being the pavilions (1851; destr. 1904) for the zoological gardens, designed in a style that combined Romanesque Revival with picturesque cottage characteristics. Other works in the Romanesque Revival style, designed by Pauli before 1865, include two large welfare institutions, the Dr Jozef Guislain psychiatric institute (1853–76) at Jozef Guislainstraat 43 and the Lousberg home for retired workmen (1862–5) at Lousbergkaai 89, as well as many schools (1858–66). His extension (1864–84) of the Bijlokehospital was in the Gothic Revival style in order to match the existing buildings. From 1865 he favoured the Renaissance Revival style, evident, for example, in the orphanage for boys (...

(b Berlin, April 30, 1869; d Berlin, June 14, 1936).

German architect, designer and teacher. He was the father-figure of the Expressionist group of the Deutscher Werkbund, his vision and practical genius representing a link between the English Arts and Crafts Movement and later stages of Jugendstil and the fervour of the emerging Modern Movement after World War I. Poelzig studied architecture (1889–94) at the Technische Hochschule, Berlin, under Carl Schäfer, a neo-Gothicist. After military service and a period in the Prussian Office of Works, he left Berlin in 1900 to take a teaching post in the Königliche Kunst- und Kunstgewerbeschule, Breslau (now Wrocław), becoming its director from 1903 to 1916. There he introduced workshop-based courses that influenced the later teaching policy of Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus. Poelzig’s early buildings included two houses, one at an exhibition of applied art (1904) in Breslau and his own house (1906) at Leerbeutel, near Breslau. Both are examples of the influence in Germany at that time of English Arts and Crafts houses. Rough-cast rendering divided into rectilinear panels by smooth bands characterized his own house and also appeared in his evangelical church (...

(b Nieuwpoort, Jan 3, 1786; d Ghent, April 5, 1864).

Belgian architect. He was the son of a carpenter; from 1803 he trained at the Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent, where he was awarded a first prize in 1808. He went to Paris, where he worked in the important studio of Charles Percier(-Bassant) and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine. Together with L. Renard, Tieleman-Frans Suys and others, he contributed to the Choix des plus célèbres maisons de plaisance de Rome et de ses environs (1809–12), with drawings by Fontaine and Percier. In 1811 he won the Prix de Rome but did not go to Italy for health reasons. The fall of the Empire brought him back to Belgium in 1815, and he was appointed City Architect and professor at the Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Antwerp. His entry for a competition in London to make a monument commemorating the Battle of Waterloo, and above all his design (1816) for the auditorium of Ghent University, instantly established his reputation. He returned to Ghent, where he held the post of City Architect from ...

(b Enguera, Valencia, 1757; d Mexico City, Dec 24, 1816).

Spanish architect, sculptor, and teacher, active in Mexico. He studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de S Carlos, Valencia, at a time when Baroque forms were being rejected in Spain and Neo-classicism was being promoted. He was apprenticed to the sculptor José Puchol Rubio (d 1797), who also taught him extensively about architecture. In 1780 Tolsá moved to Madrid, where he studied under Juan Pascual de Mena and at the Real Academia de Bellas-Artes de S Fernando, where his subjects included painting. There he also designed several reliefs, including the Entry of the Catholic Kings into Granada (1784; Madrid, Real Acad. S Fernando). He was selected as an academician in 1789.

Following the endorsement of Juan Adán and Manuel Francisco Alvarez de la Peña, in 1790 Tolsá succeeded José Arias (c. 1743–88) as director of sculpture at the Real Academia de S Carlos de la Nueva España in Mexico City. He took with him a collection of plaster casts for sculptures, many books, and 154 quintals (7 tonnes) of plaster for the Academia. He arrived in ...