Otto Koenigsberger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto Königsberger (born October 13, 1908 in Berlin ; † January 3, 1999 in London ) was a German-born British architect , urban planner and university professor. He was the pioneer of housing and settlement in developing countries , an advisor to the United Nations and to governments around the world on development issues. His handbook Manual of Tropical Housing and Building (1974) is still regarded as a basic and standard work.

Life

Otto Königsberger grew up in Berlin . He completed his architecture studies with Hans Poelzig at the Technical University of Berlin in 1931. In 1933 he was awarded the Schinkel Prize for his design “Olympiastadion Berlin” and, due to the Nuremberg Laws, was dismissed from the Prussian civil service as a construction referendar in 1933 . He then fled Germany to Cairo , Egypt . There he researched from 1933 to 1939 together with Ludwig Borchardt , the former director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo , at the Swiss Institute for the History of Egyptian Architecture and received his doctorate in 1935 on the subject of "Construction of the Egyptian Door".

In 1939, on the recommendation of his uncle Max Born , whose book The Restless Universe (1935) he had illustrated, and his Indian friend CV Raman , who was looking for a qualified architect on behalf of Diwan Mirza Ismail , Königsberger became chief architect and planner in the southern Indian state of Mysore . There he built public buildings for the Indian Institute of Science (1943–1944), the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bombay (Mumbai), a bus station, the Serum Institute, the Victory Hall (1946, later: City Hall) in Bangalore and developed urban planning for Bhubaneswar and Jamshedpur based on the ideas of Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata . In Bangalore he exchanged ideas with the garden and landscape architect Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel .

With India's independence in 1948, Pandit brought Nehru Königsberger to the Ministry of Health as head of housing construction with the task of creating settlements and apartments for those displaced by the partition of India. He planned new cities and settlements such as Faridabad , Nilokheri and Gandhidham .

In 1951 Königsberger went to Great Britain . He initially taught at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London . From 1954 to 1956 he was a member of the UN Mission for Planning and Housing in Ghana . From 1957 to 1972 he succeeded Maxwell Fry as head of the Department of Development and Tropical Studies at the Architectural Association School of Architecture London. In 1972 he founded the Development Planning Unit (dpu) at University College London in the Bartlett School of Planning . He headed the dpu until 1976 and taught there as a professor until his retirement in 1978 planning and building in developing countries, especially on housing and urbanization issues, together with Nigel Harris , Louis Wassenhoven, Michael Safier, Jaya Appalraju, Ronaldo Ramirez, Patrick Wakely, Hartmut Schmetzer (1941–2004), among others, as well as the anthropologist Kenneth Colin Rosser (1926–2012), who from 1976 helped set up the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development as director with colleagues from the dpu . Until 1978, Königsberger was the editor of the magazine "Habitat". After his death on 3 January 1999 in London Konigsberg was at Golders Green Crematorium cremated , where his ashes is located.

meaning

Königsberger made modern architecture in India known with the new architecture . He researched the conditions of a proven, local, climate-friendly settlement and building, which was mainly based on natural, proven regional building methods and less on globalized architectural fashions. Together with Carl Mahoney and John Martin Evans, he developed the O'Mahoney tables , which are climate data and reference tables as the basis for climate-friendly building, which the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs published in 1971. With his method of informal action planning, he recorded and eliminated the causes of urban development grievances instead of arbitrarily transferring modernist European ideas of urban planning as formal requirements ( master plan ) to Asia and Africa. Königsberger called his empirical model of planning strategies for sustainable development based on the recycling of raw materials and goods of the informal economy filtering down process .

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dennis Sharp: Obituary: Ottio Koenigsberger. Independent, January 13, 1999, accessed September 25, 2019 .
  2. ^ Rahel Lee: Negotiating Modernities: Otto Koenigsberger's Works and Network in Exile (1933-1951). In: Abe Journal. October 1, 2014, accessed September 25, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Amita Sinha 1 and Jatinder Singh 2: Jamshedpur: Planning an Ideal Steel City in India On behalf of: Society for American City and Regional Planning History. Research Gate, 2011, accessed September 25, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Rachel Lee: Constructing a Shared Vision: Otto Koenigsberger and Tata & Sons. In: Abe-journal, Architecture beyond Europe. Abe, September 1, 2013, accessed September 25, 2019 (French, English).
  5. ^ Rahel Lee: The German architect who led independent India's first attempt at prefabricated housing. In: scroll.in. June 26, 2018, accessed September 25, 2019 .
  6. ^ AA Archives: Otto Koenigsberger Collections: Otto Koenigsberger Collections. Architectural Association London, March 18, 2015, accessed September 25, 2019 .
  7. ^ History Sixty Years of Urban Development Education, Training, Research and Consultancy. In: bartlett. The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, accessed September 25, 2019 (German).
  8. ↑ dpu news. Robert Biel & Pascale Hofmann, September 2004, accessed on September 28, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Nigel Harris: Colin Rosser obituary. In: The Guardian. November 11, 2012, accessed September 28, 2019 .
  10. ^ Patrick Wakely: DPU Associates. Retrieved September 27, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Lothar Götz, Eckhart Ribbeck: Otto Königsberger for the hundredth. In: Bauwelt. Retrieved in 2008 (German).
  12. ^ Patrick Wakely: Otto Koenigsberger obituary Cities of light from slums of darkness. In: The Guardian. January 26, 1999, accessed September 25, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Koenigsberger, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British architect, urban planner and university lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1999
Place of death London