Eugene Rosenberg (architect)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Eugene (Evžen) Rosenberg (24 February 1907 – 21 November 1990) was a Slovak modernist architect who later worked in Britain.

Born in Topoľčany, Slovakia, he studied engineering in Bratislava, Brno and Prague from 1920 to 1928, and then studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1929 to 1932 under Josef Gočár. In 1929 he worked with Le Corbusier in Paris and with Czech designers Havlíček and Honzík in Prague.

Rosenberg opened his own practice in Prague in 1934. To escape the Nazi occupation in 1939, he moved to Britain, encouraged by friends Maxwell Fry and F. R. S. Yorke. In 1940 he was interned and sent to Australia, first to Hay Gaol in New South Wales and then to Camp Tatura in Victoria, returning to London in 1942.

In 1944 he formed the architectural firm Yorke Rosenberg Mardall with F. R. S. Yorke and C. S. Mardall. The firm worked on several innovative projects, including Gatwick Airport, the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, and the Manchester Magistrates Court.

After retirement he focused on a book about alliances between artists and architects. He died in 1990.

Legacy:
In 1992 Thames and Hudson published Architect’s Choice, Art in Architecture in Great Britain since 1945. Rosenberg was a collector of contemporary art and promoted public art, such as the Altnagelvin Hospital Mural (1959–61) by William Scott, commissioned by Rosenberg for Britain’s first post‑war NHS hospital building in 1958. He believed that art and architecture enrich each other and that artists have an important contribution to make to architecture.