William Dark

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William Dunkel (born March 26, 1893 in New Jersey , USA ; † September 10, 1980 in Kilchberg near Zurich ) was a Swiss architect , painter and university professor ; he worked in Germany until he was appointed to ETH Zurich in 1929.

Life

William Dunkel was born in 1893 as the son of the Reformed Swiss Jakob Dunkel and Berta Marie, born. Kruse was born in the USA but grew up in Buenos Aires and Lausanne . In 1912, Dunkel began studying architecture at the Dresden University of Technology . In 1917 he was with the work "contributions to the development of town planning in the United States of America" in Cornelius Gurlitt at the Technical University Dresden doctorate .

Due to the economically desolate times after the First World War , he initially worked as an advertising artist in Düsseldorf . From 1917 to 1918 he worked in the office of the architect and university professor Wilhelm Kreis . Through his artistic activities as a painter , William Dunkel got to know Paul Klee , Otto Dix , Max Liebermann and Oskar Kokoschka and maintained contacts. As a painter, Dunkel left behind a larger work.

In 1923, Dunkel opened his own architectural office in Düsseldorf. He drew attention to himself with some competition successes and orders. In 1926 he married Emita Gschwind. In 1929 he was appointed full professor of architecture at the ETH Zurich . His students included Max Frisch , Alberto Camenzind , Justus Dahinden and Jakob Zweifel .

Like Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, William Dunkel was a representative of New Building and consistently implemented the architectural style in Switzerland, particularly in 1929 with the Orion car factory in Zurich and in 1932 with his own home in Kilchberg . However, two of Dunkel's projects were rejected in a referendum in Zurich: in 1953 the Oktogon stadium, an arena with 60,000 seats designed by William Dunkel's assistant Justus Dahinden, and in 1961 the New Zurich City Theater, based on the Alvar theater Aalto in Essen .

William Dunkel died on September 10, 1980 in Kilchberg near Zurich.

honors and awards

plant

Buildings (selection)

High-rise residential building for the " Haus Rheinpark " project in Düsseldorf- Golzheim (1926–1929)

Fonts

  • Contributions to the development of urban planning in the United States of America. Dissertation, Dresden University of Technology, 1917.
  • Buildings for residential use. Fabag + Druckerei, Winterthur 1929.
  • William Dark. (= New Work Art .) Friedrich Ernst Hübsch, Berlin 1929.
  • The “Züriturm” project. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , 1959.

literature

  • Jörg Hamburger, William Dunkel: William Dunkel - 70 years. Buchdruckerei AG, Winterthur 1965.
  • Roger Bolshauser: William Dunkel. The City Theater Competition Zurich 1961. Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich 1995.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Ernst Wentz: Architecture Guide Düsseldorf , Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1975, object no. 40
  2. ^ Holger Rescher: brick architecture of the 1920s in Düsseldorf . Dissertation Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Bonn 2001, p. 129 ( PDF ( Memento from February 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))

Web links

Commons : William Dunkel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Dark, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss architect and painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1980
Place of death Kilchberg , Switzerland