Search Results

(b Warsaw, July 16, 1873; d Warsaw, Dec 11, 1925).

Polish architect. Son of the Warsaw architect Jan Kacper Heurich (1834–87), he studied at the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg (1890–96) then travelled in Western Europe and North Africa on a Grand Prix de Rome fellowship (1897–9) before returning to Warsaw. Until about 1905 he worked mostly on commissions from various Polish aristocratic families, designing palaces, villas and manors in the Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania, Volhynia and Podole. His work here was marked by eclectic arrangements of forms, mainly Baroque and Neo-classical: his palace chapel (1903–4) at Kozłówka near Lublin, designed for Count Zamoyski, is a copy of the chapel at Versailles.

It is, however, to work of a far more radical style, executed in Warsaw after 1905, that Heurich owes his reputation. The large town house at 2 Małachowski Square (1907–10; destr. 1939–44, rebuilt 1948–9), the ‘Under the Eagles House’ Bank of Co-operative Societies at 1 Jasna Street (...

[Oscar; Oskar]

(b Újszentanna [now Santa Ana, Romania], Feb 2, 1873; d Budapest, Sept 6, 1956).

Hungarian architect and interior designer, active in Germany and Palestine. After studying music in Budapest, he studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule, Karlsruhe, where he obtained his Diploma of Architecture in 1899. In 1900 he settled in Berlin, where he worked first as an interior designer for private clients. Later he specialized in designing theatres and cinemas. In contrast with reform movements, he advocated the strict separation of the stage from the auditorium (the realm of illusion from that of reality), and the traditional arrangement of the auditorium with balconies and intimate boxes. His first major work was the Hebbeltheater (1907–8; with San Micheli Wolkenstein and Albert Weber), Berlin. The almost monolithic severity of the façade and the building’s imposingly dynamic composition are emphasized by the intimate, refined elegance of the interior, a contrast characteristic of his subsequent work. The wall-coverings of silk and wood and the decentralized light-sources combine to create a warm, salon-type interior. Similar designs include the Municipal Theatre (...

[Kemalettin Bey]

(b Istanbul, 1870; d Ankara, July 1927).

Turkish architect. He studied at the College of Civil Engineering in Istanbul, graduating in 1891, and at the Charlottenburg Technische Hochschule in Berlin (1896–8). After his return to Turkey in 1900, he taught at the College of Civil Engineering in Istanbul and became chief architect of the Ministry of Pious Foundations (1909), entrusted with the restoration of historical monuments and the design of new buildings. This work enabled him to analyse the principles of Ottoman architecture and formulate a revivalist idiom. He built mosques, mausoleums, office blocks, schools, prisons and hospitals; the small mosque (1913) at Bebek, Istanbul, is a fine example of his revivalist style. The Fourth Vakıf Han (1912–26), a large seven-storey office block in Istanbul’s Bahçekapı district, epitomizes Ottoman revivalist architecture, also known as the First National Architectural Style (see Islamic art, §II, 7(i)). Its well-ordered stone façade with rich carvings and coloured tiles hides a sophisticated steel framework. His last building complex in Istanbul, the Harikzedegan apartments (...

A category of buildings designed to house retail and shopping. It includes arcades, department stores, shopping malls, strip centres, and big-box stores. Retail architecture exists in small towns, big cities, and suburbs: anywhere people congregate. It is as ubiquitous in time and space as the organized exchange of goods for money. It is distinguished from commercial architecture, which, in real estate and architectural practice, can refer more generally to any property that produces income for its investors or owners but does not refer to a building’s architectural function (i.e. retail).

Buildings housing commercial activity have existed since antiquity. Anthropologists have described exchange halls and commercial structures in many cultures, including Roman, Aztec, Tang dynasty China, and Mesopotamian. During the medieval and Renaissance periods, market halls and exchanges were built in cities such as Antwerp, Bruges, London, and Venice, sheltering trading activities at ground level and municipal government functions above (...

(Sergeyevich)

(b Nakhchyvan’-on-Don [now Rostov-on-Don], Feb 28, 1880; d Yerevan, May 5, 1972).

Armenian painter and museum director. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1897 to 1903 and then worked in the studios of Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin. He was a member of the Moscow Symbolist group around Pavel Kuznetsov who participated in the Crimson Rose (Alaya Roza) exhibition in Saratov, 1904, and the Blue Rose group’s exhibition in Moscow in 1907. Like the other members of the group, Saryan painted fantastic themes, sometimes based on folk tales, although in brighter colours and with stronger rhythmic patterns than were typical of the other Symbolists. Man with Gazelles (1906–7; untraced, see Gray, rev. 2/1986, pl. 45), exhibited at the Blue Rose exhibition and Panthers, also known as Deserted Village (1907; Yerevan, Pict. Gal. Armenia), with its bright blue sky, yellow tree and dark blue panthers, indicate a growing interest in exotic places and an increasingly stylized treatment of figures and animals....

(b Feodosiya, Dec 24, 1867; d Monte Carlo, Aug 17, 1968).

Russian stage designer of Abkhazian descent. In 1893, after studying under Vasily Polenov at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, he went to Paris, where he later joined the Montparnasse art circle established in 1904 by Yelizaveta Kruglikova. From 1891 he worked on easel paintings, but in 1906 he was appointed head of the St Petersburg studio of stage design. His most significant designs during this period were for Vsevolod Meyerhold’s production (1908) of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1911–12 he worked at the Starinny Theatre alongside artists from the World of Art group, such as Nicholas Roerich, Ivan Bilibin, Yevgeny Lansere and Nikolay Kalmakov (1873–1955). Shervashidze also worked as a draughtsman, a book illustrator, a dress designer, and as a critic and theoretist, publishing articles in Apollon, Zolotoye runo, Mir iskusstvo and Iskusstvo. He lived in Sukhumi for a while from ...

[Vedat BeyVedat Tek]

(b Istanbul, 1873; d Istanbul, 1942).

Turkish architect and teacher. After completing his secondary education at the Ecole Nonge in Paris, he studied painting at the Académie Julian and civil engineering at the Ecole Centrale, and then trained as an architect at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, completing his studies in 1897. On returning to Istanbul in 1899, he was employed by the Municipality, becoming chairman of the Supervising Committee for Public Works and later the chief architect. In 1900 he also became the first Turk to teach architectural history at the Fine Arts Academy in Istanbul. Like his contemporary, Kemalettin, he played an important role in the development of a revivalist Turkish idiom in architecture, known as the First National Architectural Style, and his works and his writings reveal the theoretical approach behind the movement.

Vedat’s first major work, the Central Post Office (1909) in Sirkeci, Istanbul, employed such features of traditional Ottoman architecture as depressed or pointed arches and glazed tiles (...

( Bogdanovich )

(b Tiflis [now Tbilisi], Jan 2, 1884; d Erevan, Dec 28, 1928).

Georgian stage designer and painter of Armenian origin, active in Russia . He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1901–3) but was expelled after a disagreement over the teaching methods. Posted to the Far East during military service, he became acquainted with Far Eastern decorative art, which inspired the works he exhibited with the Blue Rose group after his return to Moscow in 1907 (e.g. The Races, 1905; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.). His work of this time refers to traditional Chinese and medieval European art refracted through Art Nouveau, in an attempt to create a new decorative style in easel painting. In Moscow he often designed the décor for artistic soirées and balls, creating architecturally decorative compositions whose basic components were painted panels. In 1910 he travelled to Italy and in 1912–13 he worked in Paris, where he became acquainted with Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay. In ...