Korn, Arthur

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Korn, Arthur (1891–1978). German-born architect. He worked with Mendelsohn in Berlin (from 1919) before setting up in partnership with Sigfried Weitzmann in 1922, with whom he built the Villa Goldstein, Grünewald, Berlin (1922), the Kopp and Joseph Shops, Berlin (1922–30), the Ullstein Building, Berlin (1930), the Fromm Factory, Köpenick, Berlin (1928), and the Intourist Shop, Unter den Linden, Berlin (1929), among other works. The Fromm Factory had a steel frame, painted red, exposed, and emphasized, and it was this building, more than any other, that was the spark for Mies van der Rohe's development of the theme. In 1929 he published Glas im Bau und als Gebrauchsgegenstand (Glass in Building and as an Item of Practical Use), which was influential, but his most important years were arguably spent in England. He chaired the MARS Group, which produced a plan for London that encapsulated his Hegelian and Marxist ideas (he had been a member of Der Ring), and worked with Fry and Yorke (1938–41). As a teacher, first at the Oxford School of Architecture (1941–5) and then at the Architectural Association (1945–65), he had a powerful influence on determining the course of architecture and town-planning until well into the 1980s.

Bibliography

Kalman (1994);
Korn (1953, 1967);
personal knowledge;
Jane Turner (1996)

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

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Korn, Arthur

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