Hans Schmidt (architect)

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Hans Schmidt (center) in 1965

Johannes "Hans" Schmidt (born December 10, 1893 in Basel ; † June 18, 1972 in Soglio ; non-denominational ; resident in Brugg ) was a Swiss architect , urban planner , architectural theorist and graphic artist .

Life

Hans Schmidt, son of geologist Carl Schmidt and Dorothea Charlotte née Hudtwalker, studied history , art history and archeology at the University of Geneva for one semester after completing his Matura . Schmidt then completed a traineeship as a draftsman in the Zurich office of Robert Curjel and Karl Moser , before turning to studying architecture with Carl Hocheder and Friedrich von Thiersch at the TH Munich in 1913 . In 1917 Schmidt switched to Moser and Hans Bernoulli at ETH Zurich . There he obtained his diploma in 1918. His first independent project was a competition entry submitted in 1918 for the Geneva cooperative settlement and garden city "Piccard, Pictet Co." in Aïre .

After working briefly with Bernoulli and Ernst Eckenstein, Schmidt moved to the Netherlands in 1920 . Schmidt, influenced there by Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud , who found employment with the renowned architect Michiel Brinkman in 1922 and worked for his construction site in Rotterdam , returned to Switzerland in 1924. After Schmidt founded an architecture office together with Paul Artaria in 1926 , he used it to build various residential and residential buildings up to 1930, with which he made a name for himself as one of the leading architects of the New Building movement .

Schmidt, who was one of the founders of CIAM in 1928 , went to Moscow in 1930 as an advisor to the People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry . In the following years he worked in the Soviet Union in the planning and execution of several industrial cities, and in 1937 he returned to Switzerland. In 1944 he was one of the founders of the Communist Labor Party , which he represented in the Grand Council of the Canton of Basel-Stadt from 1944 to 1955 .

In 1956 he followed a call as chief architect at the Institute for Typing in East Berlin , in 1958 he was appointed director of the Institute for Theory and History of Architecture at the German Building Academy . Schmidt, who received an honorary doctorate there in 1963 , returned to Switzerland after retiring in 1969, where he died three years later at the age of 78. Hans Schmidt was the older brother of the art historian Georg Schmidt . In 1968 he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver in the GDR .

Hans Schmidt, who initially emerged with graphic work, including the hand-colored woodcut series Die Irrfahrten des Odysseus , completed in 1911 and kept in the Kunstmuseum Basel , was a socially committed pioneer in housing and urban development, primarily concerned with the possibilities of standardizing and redesigning the city. Among other things, he published the design and redesign of the city , published in 1970, with Rolf Linke and Gerd Wessel.

More fonts

  • Color as a means of artistic expression in architecture and town planning. German building information at the German Building Academy, Berlin 1963.
  • Contributions to architecture 1924 - 1964. VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, 1965.
  • Contributions to architectural theory research: discussion material. Institute for Urban Development and Architecture of the German Building Academy, Berlin 1967.
  • Function and composition of the city centers: studies using the example of the city centers of Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden and Karl-Marx-Stadt. German building information at the German Building Academy, Berlin 1967.
  • Streets and squares: examples of the design of urban spaces. Edition 2. Verlag für Bauwesen VEB, Berlin 1971.
  • With Jean Villain : Environment and housing as societal questions of fate: How much dirt can Switzerland tolerate? Labor Party, Zurich 1971.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New Germany , December 10, 1968. p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmidt, Johannes (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss architect, urban planner, architectural theorist and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1972
Place of death Soglio