|
Korn, Arthur
(b Breslau [now Wroclaw, Poland], 4 June 1891; d Vienna, 14 Nov 1978). German architect, urban planner and teacher, active in England. After attending secondary school in Berlin, he studied at the Königliche Kunst- und Kunstgewerbeschule, Berlin, graduating in 1911. After military service during World War I, he joined the office of Erich Mendelsohn in Berlin, where he had already gained some pre-war experience in urban planning. Subsequently in partnership with Sigfried Weitzmann, he rapidly established a practice there, designing the Villa Goldstein (1922), Grunewald, a project (1924) for a business centre in Haifa, Palestine (now Israel), and other commercial buildings. At this time he was also a member of the avant-garde artistic group, Der Ring. The Fromm Rubber Factory (1927), Friedrichstrasse, Berlin, showed, like the Haifa scheme, an early rationalization of glass as a building element, articulated successfully within the façade by means of curved fenestration. His celebrated opaque glass front of the Kopp and Joseph shop (1928) in Berlin demonstrated the essential paradox of the transparency yet solidity of the material, on which Korn published a monograph the following year. The Verlag Ullstein Building (1930), Berlin, offered a carefully modulated solution to a prominent street corner frontage, successfully utilizing large curtain glazing panels. Korn moved to London in 1938 to work with F. R. S. Yorke (see YORKE, ROSENBERG & MARDALL) and E. Maxwell Fry. There he was influential in urban planning circles as chairman (1938) of the MARS Town Planning Committee (see MARS GROUP), which was responsible for the Plan of London (1942). He taught from 1941 at the School of Architecture, Oxford, and from 1945 until his retirement in 1965 at the Architectural Association School, London.
|
