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(Henrik)

(b Kuortane, Feb 3, 1898; d Helsinki, May 11, 1976).

Finnish architect and designer, active also in America. His success as an architect lay in the individual nature of his buildings, which were always designed with their surrounding environment in mind and with great attention to their practical demands. He never used forms that were merely aesthetic or conditioned by technical factors but looked to the more permanent models of nature and natural forms. He was not anti-technology but believed that technology could be humanized to become the servant of human beings and the promoter of cultural values. One of his important maxims was that architects have an absolutely clear mission: to humanize mechanical forms.

His father was a government surveyor working in the lake district of central Finland and became a counterforce to his son’s strong artistic calling. Instead of becoming a painter, which tempted him for a long time, Alvar chose the career of architect as a possible compromise. He never became a planner dominated by technological thinking, however, but always gave his creations an artistic, humanistic character. He studied at the Technical College in Helsinki (...

(b Harplinge, Halland, June 10, 1891; d Stockholm, March 12, 1984).

Swedish architect and writer. He graduated from the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (1914) and from the Kungliga Akademien för de fria Konsterna in Stockholm (1918), before working in the office of Ivar Tengbom. From 1921 to 1924 Ahlberg was a writer for and editor of Byggmästaren, the Swedish journal of building and architecture. His architectural production encompassed the traditionalism and neo-classicism of the early 20th century, as well as the International Style, characterized by rational, pragmatic design. His Arts and Crafts Stand at the Göteborg Jubilee Exposition (1923), with its mannered, slender pavilions, was an early contribution to the neo-classical revival of the 1920s. The Freemasons’ Orphanage (1928–31) at Blackeberg outside Stockholm showed his development of this classicism into austere geometrical simplicity, while the buildings of the Trade Union High School (1928–50) at Brünnsvik, Dalecarlia, are based on the national timber-building tradition, with red panelling, white-framed windows and tiled, hipped roofs. The same combination of rational simplicity and romantic traditionalism occurs in Ahlberg’s ecclesiastical buildings, such as Mälarhöjden Chapel (...

(b Stockholm, Aug 6, 1897; d Arvika, Oct 8, 1977).

Swedish architect and writer. While a student at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskola in Stockholm (1915–19), he participated in the Home Exhibition of the Swedish Society of Arts and Crafts at Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm. He worked in the office of Gunnar Asplund (1921–3), and his early works are in the then-prevalent Neo-classical style. However, he soon adopted the Modernism of Le Corbusier’s Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau (1925) and the Weissenhofsiedlung at Stuttgart (1927), and he became a protagonist of rational and socially directed planning and architecture. His Students’ Union building at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskola (1928; with Sven Markelius), the Flamman Cinema (1929) and the Ford Motor Co. warehouse (1930), all in Stockholm, represent this new aesthetic. Furniture and industrial design were also an important part of his work during the 1920s and 1930s. As a prolific writer for the press and professional journals, he was an effective propagandist of Modernism, contributing to the Stockholm Exhibition of ...

(b Lisbon, April 28, 1910; d Lisbon, Feb 19, 1975).

Portuguese architect, theorist and writer. He studied with Carlos Ramos in the early 1930s and his first significant work was a Modernist pavilion (1937; destr.) for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, Paris (1937), a commission he won in competition against Raul Lino. Influenced by contemporary Dutch architecture and urban planning, he designed Lisbon’s airport (1943) at Portela and various works in the capital’s parks. The latter are intimate, modernist and successfully integrated projects, for example restaurants in the Campo Grande park (1948; destr.), in the Florestal de Monsanto park (1940; altered) and in the Eduardo VII park (altered). He also designed for the same parks a municipal swimming-pool (1965), a tennis club building (1952; with Hernâni Gandra and Alberto Pessoa) and the remodelled Estufa Fria (cold house for plants) respectively. A born teacher, researcher and polemicist, Amaral formed a school of theory and practice of architecture in which he fostered the idea of cultural and social awareness as a determining factor in design. In the years following World War II he was active in politics, adhering firmly to left-wing ideas. He was the main instigator of the survey of vernacular architecture in Portugal (...

(b Mexico City, Mar 29, 1915; d Mexico City, May 25, 1959).

Mexican architect and theorist. He received a degree in architecture at the Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura (ENA) at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM) in 1940, and studied urbanism at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in 1941–1942. In 1954 he received a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters at UNAM. Arai built relatively few buildings, but he was one of Mexico’s foremost theorists of architectural modernism. Early in his career he embraced the principles associated with the formally austere, politically engaged architecture that dominated Mexico City in the 1930s; later he became fascinated by the architecture of indigenous Mexico and its lessons for modern architects. Arai’s intellectualism distinguished him from many of his colleagues and his study of history and philosophy shaped his sophisticated writings on architecture, urbanism, and indigenous art.

Arai had a distinguished teaching career with appointments in multiple fields and at several institutions. He was professor of architectural theory at ENA from ...

Dutch association of architects, based in Amsterdam from 1927 to 1942. It was founded by six former pupils of the School voor Bouwkunde, Versierende Kunsten en Ambachten in Haarlem: Ben(jamin) Merkelbach, J. H. Groenewegen, Charles Karsten (1904–79), Hans van den Bosch (b 1900), Henri E. van de Pauwert (1895–1981) and Pieter Jan Verschuyl (1902–83). The name, probably coined by van de Pauwert during his military service, derived from the command to attention used in the Dutch army—‘geef acht’, ‘acht’ in Dutch meaning either ‘attention’ or ‘eight’. In the manifesto of De 8, published in the journal I 10 (1927), the young architects presented themselves as pragmatic and international, thus taking a stand against the expressive architectural outlook of the Amsterdam school to which their former teachers belonged. The declaration of intent, stimulated by the ideas of H. P. Berlage, De Stijl and contacts with functionalism in Belgium and Germany, attracted other Dutch architects and engineers connected with the Nieuwe Bouwen (‘new building’) movement of the 1920s. In ...

(b Stockholm, Sept 22, 1885; d Stockholm, Oct 20, 1940).

Swedish architect and designer. He led the development of Swedish architecture from the classicism characteristic of the period of World War I to the Functionalism of the 1930s. His modern classical style was influential in Nordic countries, but his international reputation was founded on his Modernist work for the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 and on his posthumous publications.

Asplund studied at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (1905–9), but he rejected the conventional continuation of training at the Academy of Arts. Instead he joined the Klara School, an alternative studio school which came into existence in 1910–11, where Ivar Tengbom, Carl Bergsten and Ragnar Östberg were among his teachers. Östberg inspired him to travel to Italy in 1913–14, and the lasting impression that Italy made on him was reinforced by the photographs he took there. He was especially interested in vernacular Italian architecture, and the interplay between buildings, landscape and light. He was also stimulated by visits to Denmark, where there was a growing interest in the architecture of the 18th century and early 19th....

(Maria)

(b Barcelona, Sept 24, 1877; d Barcelona, Nov 4, 1965).

Catalan architect . He completed his architectural studies in the School of Architecture of Barcelona in 1905, at a time when Catalan Modernisme was at its peak, although a reaction against it had also begun to appear in the form of Noucentisme. This is reflected in the first period of Balcells’s career, which was his most brilliant. His early designs, the Calado House (1905) and the Torquella House (1906), both in Cerdanyola, and the Lluch House (1906) in San Cugat del Vallés show an exuberant use of exotic features, inspired by Arabic and Gothic architecture and the strident Eclecticism of the late 19th century. Balcells’s designs subsequently became more moderate, first through his taste for a certain medieval picturesqueness, for example in the Mestres House (1907) and in the Rectoral House (1908), Cerdanyola, and afterwards through his affiliation to Secessionist architecture, for example in the Güal House (...

(b Rovereto, Dec 10, 1896; d Milan, Sept 26, 1982).

Italian architect, stage designer and painter . After studying at the Scuola Reale Elisabettiana, an applied arts school in Rovereto, he joined the Futurist movement, headed locally by Fortunato Depero. After serving in World War I, he enrolled at the Scuola Superiore di Architettura del Politecnico, Milan, graduating in architecture in 1922. He then spent four years (1922–6) in Berlin working as a stage designer and frequenting the avant-garde milieu around Max Reinhardt, Erwin Piscator and Oskar Kokoschka. He returned to Italy in 1926 and set up his own practice. His first important commission, the remodelling of the Bar Craja (1930; with Figini and Pollini) in Milan, with its handsome glass and steel interior, established Baldessari’s reputation as an innovative designer. He collaborated again with Figini and Pollini on the De Angeli-Frua office building (1931–2) in Milan, a fine example of Italian Rationalism at its most restrained. Baldessari’s architectural masterpiece of this period was, however, the Press Pavilion (...

(b Vichy, April 1, 1907; d Vichy, May 30, 1989).

French architect, urban planner and writer . Immediately after his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he presented designs for a ‘garden city for intellectuals’ at the Salon d’Automne of 1934. He then entered the Institut d’Urbanisme of the University of Paris, where he was much taken with the teaching of the architectural historian Marcel Poëte (1866–1951). He established a reputation in 1937 with La Rome de Mussolini, in which he unreservedly celebrated il Duce’s urban development policy. He worked with Jacques Gréber, the chief architect of the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne of 1937, and in 1941 he published Problèmes d’urbanisme, in which he set out for the first time a global manifesto linking both spatial and social factors. He was particularly opposed to the planning principles on which Le Corbusier based the sunburst layout of his Ville radieuse, but he commended the functionalist designs of Alexander Klein to a French audience in ...

(b Guadalajara, Mar 9, 1902; d Mexico City, Nov 22, 1988).

Mexican architect. Recipient of the Pritzker Prize, he was the most celebrated of Mexico’s modern architects, known for his regionally inflected designs. Born to a wealthy, devoutly Catholic family, he earned his degree in civil engineering from Guadalajara’s Escuela Libre de Ingenieros in 1923, and soon after completed his course in architecture (though the school closed before his degree could be awarded). On trips to Europe and the USA in 1924–1925, 1930, and 1931 he was impressed by the Alhambra and by the work of Le Corbusier; he also made important contacts with muralist José Clemente Orozco, Architectural Record editor Lawrence Kocher, French author, artist, and architect Ferdinand Bac (1859–1952), and Le Corbusier himself, whose lectures he attended in Paris in 1931. Barragán is best known for a small group of gardens, houses, and subdivisions built around Mexico City between 1945 and 1976 that blend Modernist minimalism with brilliant colors and elements drawn from Mexican colonial and vernacular buildings. Called ...

(b Karlsruhe, April 12, 1883; d Darmstadt, Feb 20, 1959).

German architect and writer. Bartning studied at the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe and at the Technische Hochschule and the University in Berlin. In 1905 he established a practice in Berlin. By 1918 he had received c. 50 commissions, but he only began to publish his work after World War I. The upheavals of the period prompted him to propose the spatial and stylistic reorganization of German Protestant church building as a means of restoring social harmony. His book, On New Church Buildings, appeared in 1919 and spurred a revolution in German sacred architecture. During the 1920s Bartning joined the Novembergruppe, the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, and Der Ring, the principal German avant-garde artistic and architectural groups. His most interesting contribution to the brief period of German Expressionism was the Sternkirche project (1922). The centralized church is surmounted by a roof of layered concrete shells that are supported by a thicket of columns, intended as a reinterpretation of Gothic construction....

Italian architectural partnership of architects, designers, urban planners and critics, established in Milan in 1932. The firm’s name was derived from the first letters of the surnames of its four partners, Gian Luigi Banfi (b Milan, 2 April 1910; d Mauthausen, Austria, 10 April 1945), Ludovico (Barbiano di) Belgiojoso (b Milan, 1 Dec 1909), Enrico Peressutti (b Pinzano al Tagliamento, 28 Aug 1908; d Milan, 3 May 1976) and Ernesto Nathan Rogers (b Trieste, 16 March 1909; d Gardone, 7 Nov 1969). They all graduated from the Politecnico of Milan in 1932. As well as individual projects, they presented a joint written introduction that gained the standing of a manifesto, which referred to the declaration of Gruppo 7 (1926) and proclaimed their support for the Modern Movement. They maintained: ‘The individual personality does not concern us so much.’ Shortly afterwards they formed BBPR Architectural Studio (BBPR), keeping the name even after Banfi’s death in the concentration camp at Mauthausen....

(b Seattle, WA, Aug 8, 1902; d Los Angeles, CA, Jan 16, 1969).

American architect. Although Becket was based in the Los Angeles area, he also had an international reputation. His work was in the modernist mode and he was important in popularizing the style in public buildings throughout Southern California and elsewhere.

Becket studied architecture at the University of Washington (1927) and for a short time at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His early work was for established architecture firms in Seattle and then Los Angeles, where he joined the firm of Charles F. Plummer, and, when Plumber died, he teamed up with his classmate Walter Wurdeman to form the firm of Wurdeman and Becket.

Their first major building was the Pan-Pacific Auditorium (1935) in North Hollywood, CA, an assertive structure in the Streamlined Moderne style. It was enormously successful and led to further commissions. One of the best was Bullock’s department store (1944) in Pasadena, again in the Streamlined Moderne (then called ‘modernistic’) style. It is now partially obscured by a harmonious recent building erected in its former parking lot. The interior, though remodeled several times, retains a great deal of its original décor, including a tapestry by Jean Lurçat (...

(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 Slovenská Ľupča, nr Banská Bystrica, Sept 19, 1899; d Bratislava, Dec 14, 1979).

Slovak architect and teacher. He studied at the Technical University in Budapest and then at the Technical University in Prague. In 1925 he set up his own practice in Bratislava. From the beginning his career was characterized by a conscious effort to find a modern form of functionalist architecture. He combined simple shapes in well-balanced compositions of masses, and in his delicate flat façades and his detailed interiors and exteriors he showed an unusual feeling for proportion and harmony. Characteristic examples of Belluš’s early work include the Colonnade Bridge (1932) in Piešt’any, the industrial flour-mill (1936) in Trnava and the National Bank Building (1938) in Bratislava. He also produced some sensitive reconstructions, for example of the Slovak National Council Building (1940) and the Baroque Grassalkovich Palace (1940) in Bratislava. After World War II he continued to work in a functionalist vein, notably in his designs for the Trnava Waterworks Complex (...

(b Pardubice, May 18, 1894; d Prague, March 8, 1982).

Czech architect and teacher. He studied architecture under Jan Kotěra and Josef Gočár at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, and then worked on the construction of the Czechoslovak Pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris (1925). He belonged to the architectural avant-garde in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s and he developed a clearly defined Functionalist approach. Success in several competitions gave him his most important commissions including the administration building (1926–34; with Josef Kříž) of the Electric Company, Prague, designed as a symmetrical composition with a central five-storey staircase hall; and the new airport building (1931–5) at Ruzyně, Prague, in an elegant, aerodynamic form. In contrast, his family houses in Prague and Bratislava were designed with modest cubic forms and rich interior volumes linked to their garden settings. Benš was a member of the Mánes Union of Artists, the ...

Dutch architectural partnership founded by Bernard Bijvoet (b Amsterdam, 1889; d Haarlem, 1979) and Johannes Duiker (b The Hague, 1890; d Amsterdam, 1935) in 1913 and active until 1935. They met at secondary school and studied architecture together at the Technische Hogeschool in Delft. Both graduated in 1913 and worked until 1918 in Rotterdam in the office of Henri Evers, one of their teachers at Delft; during this period they entered several competitions. The first in 1913 was for a village church, and their strong, simple vernacular design won first prize, as did their project of 1918–19 for the Karenhuizen home for the elderly in Alkmaar, which reflected the ideas of H. P. Berlage; it was their first executed building. Their next project, again awarded first prize, was for an academy of fine arts in Amsterdam (1917–19; unexecuted); the new influence of Frank Lloyd Wright is evident in both the plan and the interior perspectives. Their striking entry in the competition for the ...

Norwegian architectural and furniture design partnership formed in 1922 by Gudolf Blakstad (b Gjerpen, 19 May 1893; d Oslo, 1986) and Herman Munthe-Kaas (b Christiania [now Oslo], 25 May 1890; d Oslo, 5 March 1970). Blakstad was awarded his diploma as an architect at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim in 1916. He collaborated with Jens Dunker on the New Theatre, Oslo, from 1919 to 1929. After a preliminary training in Christiania, Munthe-Kaas finished his education at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1919.

From the beginning of their careers Blakstad and Munthe-Kaas played a leading role in Norwegian architecture. After studying in Italy in the early 1920s, they advocated Neo-classicism in architectural projects, furniture designs and writings. In 1922 they won the competition for the new Town Hall in Haugesund (1924–31), a major work of 20th-century Norwegian Neo-classicism. Above a powerfully rusticated basement, the long office wing with its regular fenestration contrasts with the higher City Council Hall, accentuated by pairs of monumental, free-standing columns. In general the effect is of robust strength and an exciting interplay of horizontals and verticals....