Gabriel Epstein

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Gabriel Epstein (mid-1980s)

Gabriel Epstein (born October 25, 1918 in Duisburg ; † July 25, 2017 in Paris ) was a British architect and urban planner best known for his master plan for Lancaster University as well as for several other large development plans and social housing plans .

Life

Gabriel Epstein's parents both came from the Lower Rhine region . Father Harry Epstein was a lawyer and head of the Jewish community . Gabriel, born in Duisburg in 1918, was the youngest of four siblings. In spring 1933 the parents fled to Belgium with Gabriel and one of his brothers from violent attacks by the National Socialists . After about nine months, only he and his brother traveled by ship from Marseille to Haifa in order to cross over to the British Mandate Palestine . The parents came later. In Jerusalem , Gabriel Epstein, who was still in school, joined the Haganah , a Zionist paramilitary unit. After graduating from high school in 1937, he did an apprenticeship with Erich Mendelsohn , an architect who had emigrated from Germany, most recently in Berlin and who had opened an office in Jerusalem in 1935. The desire to study soon matured in Epstein. On Mendelsohn's advice, he enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London. In the semester break of 1939 he went home to his parents, but was stuck there due to the war , which is why he went back to Mendelsohn and worked partly in construction management and partly as a construction worker on a construction site in his office. He met Heinz Heinrich Rau , also an émigré architect from Berlin, know, switched to him and received completely new professional insights from him. Rau became Epstein's actual teacher. From 1940 to 1942, Epstein had an acquaintance with Julius Posener , which had come about through Mendelsohn.

In 1942 the English army absorbed the Haganah unit. Epstein came to the English engineering corps , to the Royal Engineers , who were stationed in North Africa. He was promoted to officer . After the war he continued to study at the AA and graduated in 1949 with distinction ( honors degree from). He never implemented his original plan to settle professionally in Israel. Initially, he had an ID for the Mandate Territory of Palestine, was stateless after the establishment of Israel in 1948, and was granted British citizenship in 1950 .

Lancaster University forecourt

After changing short-term activities in London architects' offices, he found a satisfactory job in 1949 in the office of the two architects Derek L. Bridgwater and Peter F. Shepheard. The model student, who had just left, taught one day a week at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, the other four days he spent practically working in the office. The task of designing an extensive expansion of the University of Lancaster gave him further training, as an English university has all the approaches of a multifunctional city. Just as the task advanced him, so were his results with regard to other university buildings.

Around 1954/55 he became a partner at Bridgwater and Shepheard. Later the company name was "Shepheard Epstein and Hunter". Epstein remained loyal to this office community until the end of his professional life in 1986.

After he was elected President of the AA, he held the office from 1963 to 1964 with unease "[under the prevailing political circumstances," as he put it. In 1970 he was elected as an extraordinary member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts and in 1979 as a full member. In 1976 he served as President of the Franco-British Union of Architects in London. From 1978 until his retirement in 1988 he taught as a professor at the University of Stuttgart . He has given guest lectures at universities in Germany, France, Belgium and the USA. He worked as a planning consultant for the University of Konstanz in 1968 , for the Makerere University of Kampala (Uganda) in 1970 , for the Université des Hauts-de-Seine in 1991, in 1992 for the Université du Plateau St. Martin (both in France) and in 1992/93 worked for Espace Léopold, the building complex of the European Parliament in Brussels.

Buildings and projects

Public Housing Pigott Street, London (1982)

In Great Britain, Epstein planned and built university complexes and expansions in London, Oxford, Windsor, Liverpool, Leicester, Milton Keynes, Warwick, Lincoln and - most of all - in Lancaster. In addition, the campus and library of the University of Ghana in Legon (suburb of Accra ) and the library and five faculty buildings of the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium; German: New Leuven ) come from him abroad . In addition, there are some unrealized elaborations, for example for the Université Abou Bekr Belkaïd in Tlemcen , Algeria. In addition to the university buildings, social housing and the conversion of former docks into residential areas were focal points in Epstein's work. The most successful example of the former is Gough Grove / Pigott Street in London. The Prince's Dock in Liverpool stands for the latter.

Awards

  • 1968, 1974: Ministry Medal for Good Design in Housing, London
  • 1966–1982: (four times) Civic Trust Award, London
  • 1970: Honorary Doctorate from Lancaster University
  • 1976: Highly Commended for Good Design in Housing, London
  • 1977: London Region Award from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), London
  • 1983: International Architecture Prize from the Institut National du Logement (INL), Brussels

Fonts

  • Jerusalem 1938. In: Sonja Günther, Dietrich Worbs (Ed.): Architecture experiments in Berlin and elsewhere. For Julius Posener. Konopka, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-924812-24-1 , pp. 6-9.
  • Place of residence. Hans and Maiti Kammerer Foundation, Stuttgart 2001.

literature

  • Hans-Dieter Laubinger, Institute for Public Buildings and University Planning (Ed.): Hommage à Gabriel Epstein. Stuttgart 1987.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Gabriel Epstein: Stations of a curriculum vitae . In: Institute for Public Buildings and University Planning, Hans-Dieter Laubinger (Ed.): Hommage à Gabriel Epstein . Stuttgart 1987, p. 85-100 .
  2. ^ A b c d e Jeanine Meerapfel : The Academy of the Arts mourns Gabriel Epstein. In: adk.de. July 27, 2017, accessed April 8, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Eva-Maria Barkhofen (Ed.): Architecture in the archive. The collection of the Academy of Arts . DOM Publishers, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86922-492-3 , Gabriel Epstein, p. 106 f .

Web links

Commons : Gabriel Epstein  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Epstein, Gabriel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British architect and urban planner of German origin
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Duisburg
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 2017
Place of death Paris