Gustav Adolf Platz

This article deals with the architect Gustav Adolf Platz . For the former Gustav-Adolf-Platz in Berlin, see Mierendorffplatz .

Gustav Adolf Platz (born November 21, 1881 in Kraków ; † September 13, 1947 in Mannheim ) was a German architect .

Career

From 1909 he worked with Fritz Schumacher in Hamburg . In 1913 he joined the building administration of the city of Mannheim , where he worked from 1923 to 1932 as city planning director. In addition to his construction work, he wrote several books on contemporary and modern architecture . From 1932 on, Platz worked as a freelance architect in Berlin before he returned to Mannheim in 1942 to work in the municipal building management.

Author activity

In 1927 - as a remarkably timely addition to the renowned " Propylaea Art History " - an extensive volume "The architecture of the latest time" was published. It was the first attempt at an overall representation of modern architecture in terms of the history of architecture - from its forerunners in civil engineering of the late 19th century to the most recent forms of " New Building " in Germany.

Due to the great interest in the latest architecture, the volume was so widespread that a new edition of another 5,000 copies was soon necessary. This took place as an occasion for an extensive reworking of his work by now also including the architecture outside the German-speaking area, especially those in France and the Netherlands. In addition, he was able to trace the development of modernism based on the buildings that have been realized in the meantime - from the Stuttgart Weißenhofsiedlung to the Berlin residential buildings to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona pavilion. He also offered a critical examination of radical views ( Le Corbusier ), which he welcomed as stimulating experiments, but rejected as restrictive dogma . As a contemporary balance sheet, the second edition of “The Architecture of the Latest Time” (1930) has had a lasting effect on modern architectural historiography at home and abroad. He also published in the journal Architectura by Leo Adler a. a. the contribution system of a historical building theory, a suggestion for the reform of the architectural education .

literature

• Roland Jaeger: Gustav Adolf Platz and his contribution to the architectural historiography of modernism. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-7861-2343-8 . (= Architecture Archive , Volume 1.)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gustav Adolf Platz: System of a historical architecture theory. In: Architectura: Journal for the history and aesthetics of architecture. Leo Adler, 1933, accessed on May 8, 2017 (German, issue 1). 

Web links

• Literature by and about Gustav Adolf Platz in the catalog of the German National Library