Konrad Wachsmann

Konrad Wachsmann

German and American architect

Konrad Wachsmann (May 16, 1901 in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany – No­vem­ber 25, 1980 in Los An­ge­les, California) was a Ger­man mo­der­nist ar­chi­tect. He is no­ta­ble for his cont­ri­bu­tion to the mass pro­duc­tion of buil­ding com­po­n­ents.
Originally app­ren­ti­ced as a ca­bi­net­ma­ker, Wachs­mann stu­died at the arts-and-crafts schools of Berlin and Dresden and at the Berlin Aca­demy of Arts (under the Ex­pres­sio­nist ar­chi­tect Hans Poelzig). Du­ring the late 1920s he was chief ar­chi­tect for a ma­nu­fac­tu­rer of tim­ber buil­dings. He de­si­gned a sum­mer house for Albert Einstein, one of his lifel­ong fri­ends, in Caputh, Brandenburg. He re­cei­ved the Prix de Rome from the German Aca­demy in Rome in 1932.
In 1938 he emi­gra­ted to Paris and in 1941 to the United Sta­tes, where he began a col­la­bo­ra­tion with Walter Gropius and de­ve­l­o­ped the »Pa­cka­ged House Sys­tem«, a de­sign for a house which could be con­struc­ted in less than nine hours. Be­fore the end of the Second World War he also de­ve­l­o­ped a mo­bile air­craft han­gar for the Atlas Air­craft Corporation. He would later de­sign air­craft han­gars for the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s.
Wachsmann taught at the Illinois In­sti­tute of Technology in Chicago from 1949 to 1964 and at the University of Sou­thern California in Los Angeles from 1964 to 1974.^[1] He was the first re­ci­pi­ent of the Neutra Medal for Pro­fes­sio­nal Excellence in 1980.^[2]
He is bu­ried in his na­tive Frankfurt an der Oder.

References

1. ^ Konrad Wachsmann at the archINFORM database
2. ^ http://archrecord.construction.com/features/critique/0810critique2.asp 

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