Leopold Rother

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Leopold Siegfried Rother Cuhn (born August 27, 1894 in Breslau ; † July 3, 1978 in Bogotá ) was a German architect , urban planner and educator who lived in Bogotá ( Colombia ) from May 1936 and developed various outstanding projects there.

"By decree 1603 of July 6, 1936, signed by the Colombian President Alfonso López Pumarejo and the Minister of Construction César García Alvares, the position of assistant architect of the technical department of the General Directorate for National Buildings is established and Leopold Rother is appointed to this post."

- Ernesto Vendries Bray

There Rother met the school reformer Fritz Karsen , who had started working as an educational advisor in March 1936 at the invitation of the Colombian government. Both had attended the same high school in Wroclaw and subsequently developed the plan for the campus of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá together . This collaboration is viewed somewhat more distantly by Bray: “Between 1936 and 1946, not only Rother, but also other architects such as Luis Prieto Souza, Manuel Parra Mercado, Erich Lange and the pedagogue Fritz Karsenan participated in the design of the university town, with Rother being the one who who carried out the final design. ”Elsewhere, however, it becomes clear how much the “ Dammwegschule Project ” developed by Bruno Taut together with Karsen was the inspiration for the“ Project University City of Bogotá ”. Karsen wrote for this

“The curriculum and suggested, among other things, the creation of specialized classrooms. Instead of the traditional faculties, departments should be planned, thereby avoiding the repeated construction of laboratories and special classrooms. As in the platoon system , it is the students who constantly move to the various departments, not the teachers. To explain his educational reforms, Karsen designed a circular scheme with the subject structure. This circular scheme by Karsen was the preliminary stage to the circular campus scheme and the origin of the subsequent proposals by Leopold Rother. In relation to this, Hans Rother writes: 'It was also the educator Fritz Karsen who suggested that the central area should be circular, with the buildings arranged around a park or central square and surrounded by a main road for vehicle traffic.' This idea was realized by Leopold Rother: an oval or elliptical arrangement, which is now known to all residents of Bogota. Rother also defined five basic areas for the university: human sciences (law), medical sciences, chemistry, engineering, and applied arts and sciences (architecture, fine arts, music). "

- Ernesto Vendries Bray

As the work of Ernesto Vendries Bray impressively shows, the work of Leopold Rother is groundbreaking for Colombia, where he was the architect who contributed to establishing modern architecture in Colombia through his projects and his almost forty years of teaching at various universities in the country and spread. In recognition of his services, the first and only museum for architecture in Colombia bears the name Museo de Arquitectura Leopoldo Rother .

The Universidad Nacional de Colombia planned by him and Fritz Karsen has been on a provisional list for inclusion as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2012 .

literature

  • Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde : Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Berlin 1973. Extended new edition. With a report about Sonja Petra Karsen's father (= studies on educational reform, 37). Frankfurt a. M. [u. a.] 1999, ISBN 3-631-34896-7 , pp. 391-415. The essay first appeared under the title Report on the Father. Fritz Karsen (1885 - 1951), democratic school reformer in Berlin, emigrant and education expert. Overall-Verlag, Berlin, 1993, ISBN 3-925961-08-9 .
  • Ernesto Vendries Bray, Leopold Rother and the modern movement in Colombia , dissertation at the Architecture Faculty of the Technical University of Darmstadt , Darmstadt, 2014. Available on the Internet under Dissertation on Leopold Rother

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernesto Vendries Bray, Leopold Rother and the modern movement in Colombia , p. 143
  2. ^ Report on the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 407
  3. ↑ Ernesto Vendries Bray, Leopold Rother and the modern movement in Colombia , p. 187
  4. ↑ Ernesto Vendries Bray, Leopold Rother and the modern movement in Colombia , pp. 188-189. The Hans Rother quoted by Bray is the son of Leopold Rother, who published a book about his father's work in 1986: Hans Rother: Arquitecto Leopoldo Rother. Vida y Obra, Bogotá. Fondo Editorial Escala, 1984.
  5. ^ University City of Bogotá
personal data
SURNAME Rother, Leopold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rother Cuhn, Leopold Siegfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, urban planner and educator in Colombia
DATE OF BIRTH August 27, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH 3rd July 1978
Place of death Bogotá