John Hans Ostwald
John Hans Ostwald (born July 3, 1913 in Berlin ; † May 24, 1973 in Alameda County ) was an Austrian-American architect .
life and work
Hans Ostwald, son of a Jewish upper middle class family, moved with his parents to Vienna in 1923, where he attended the XVIII. District and passed the matriculation examination in 1931. He then studied law and economics at the University of Vienna and passed the 1st state examination after the 4th semester and then continued his studies at the London School of Economics . In 1934 he began studying architecture at the ETH Zurich , interrupted in 1935 by a semester at the Vienna University of Technology. After practical work in Vienna and Amsterdam, he completed his studies in the summer of 1938 with a diploma. He then devoted himself to architecture and art history studies and received his doctorate in 1948 under Linus Birchler at the ETH Zurich with a thesis on the work of the architect Otto Wagner .
In 1939 he emigrated to California with his wife Rosemarie (1915–1984) . Here he first found a job in San Francisco in the architecture office of Richard Neutra , a classmate of his father-in-law. He moved to Anshen & Allen in San Francisco. During the war he designed refinery buildings for Standard Oil . In 1947 he became a junior partner of Frederick Confer and specialized in residential buildings. In 1954 he founded his own company, which resulted in Ostwald & Kelly in 1965 with his junior partner E. Paul Kelly (1937–2011) . His office was in a building he designed on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley .
Ostwald built 97 houses and was responsible for the renovation of 115 more, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area and around Lake Tahoe , where he also owned a vacation home himself. In Berkeley he designed the South Branch Library (1961, demolished), the Bancroft Center (1964/65) and St. John's Presbyterian Church (completed 1975). He also designed the Alameda County Library, San Lorenzo Branch (1969/70).
Fonts
- Otto Wagner. A contribution to the understanding of his architectural work. Baden 1948 (dissertation).
literature
- Donald Reay, Peter Paret : John Hans Ostwald, Architect. The Greenwood Press, San Francisco 1975.
Web links
- John Hans Ostwald at the Berkeley Historical Plaques Project
- John Hans Ostwald in the Pacific Coast Achitecture Database
- Signature Style: John Hans Ostwald / Modern ski chalet / John Hans Ostwald brought a touch of Europe to the Bay Area
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ostwald, John Hans |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ostwald, Hans |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian-American architect |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 3, 1913 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 24, 1973 |
| Place of death | Alameda County , California |