Gottfried Semper
b. Hamburg, 1803;
d. Rome, 1879.

Architect of some of the most successful Neo-Renaissance buildings in 19-Century Europe who also produced a large body of theoretical writings on the origins and nature of architecture which were to have a major impact on the early advocates of Modernist, functional design. Before completing his mathematical studies at Gottingen, Semper is thought to have moved to Munich in 1825 to study architecture with Friedrich von GARTNER. A year later, however, he was in Paris, where he worked with Frans Christian Gau and Jacques-Ignace Hittorff. Following a tour to Italy and Greece (1830-33), Semper returned to Germany, where he was recommended by Gau to head the architecture school in Dresden, taking up the position in May 1834. As the first element in a grandiose scheme for a forum in Dresden, Semper designed the Court Theatre (1838-41) on a site adjacent to the Zwinger. Other commissions followed for houses in both Neo-Palladian and Neo-Renaissance styles, for a Moorish, Neo-Romanesque synagogue (1839-40), and for the Picture Gallery that balanced the Theatre in the grand ensemble by closing off the Zwinger court (1847-54). Following the unsuccessful republican uprising of 1849, which he had actively supported, Semper was exiled, living first in Paris (1849-51) and then in London (1851-5). In 1851 he published a comparative theory of architecture under the title Die vier Elemente der Baukunst (The Four Elements of Building), locating the origins of building in the hearth, the roof, the enclosure and the mound. This prehistory of architecture was apparently endorsed by the primitive huts exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, in which Semper played a peripheral role. Having made contact with the circle around Sir Henry Cole, he was appointed Professor in the Department of Practical Art at Marlborough House, London (1852), and his next publication, Wissenschaft, Industrie und Kunst (Science, Industry and Art; 1852), offered a critique of the crisis in design brought about by industrialization. Through the intercession of the composer Richard Wagner, Semper was offered a professorship in 1855 at the new Polytechnic in Zurich, for which he designed a monumental building in a heavily rusticated, Neo-Renaissance manner. Other commissions from this period include the “Sternwarte” in Zurich ? a combined observatory, museum and apartment block ? and the Town Hall in Winterthur (1865-9), in which two cross-axial blocks are dominated by a strong portico. During 1865-6 Semper worked on various schemes for a festival theatre for Wagner, and his combination of the earlier hemicyclic scheme of the Court Theatre at Dresden with Wagner’s demand for a proscenium stage was finally adopted in the built version (by 0. Brackwald, 1871-6). In 1871 Semper was entrusted with the rebuilding of the Dresden Court Theatre, destroyed by fire two years earlier, and produced a Neo-Baroque solution worthy of comparison with the monumental group commissioned from Semper for the Ringstrasse in Vienna, and completed by his assistant Carl von Hasenauer (Museums of Art History and Natural History, 1872-81; Burgtheater, 1874-88). Semper’s incomplete study Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Kunste (Style in the Tectonic Arts; 1860, 1863), a materialist account of the origins of art and architecture had a profound impact on the pre-modernist generation of Otto Wagner and H. P. Berlage.

List of major buildings / works:
Court Theatre, Dresden, 1838-41 (rebuilt 1871?78).
Villa Rosa, Dresden, 1839.
Synagogue, Dresden, 1839-40.
Palms Oppenheim, Dresden, 1845-8.
Picture Gallery, Dresden, 1847-54.
Albrechtsburg, Dresden, 1850-55.
Polytechnic (now EidgenOssiche Technische Hochschule), Zurich, 1858-64.
Town Hall, Winterthur, 1865-9.
Museums of Art History and Natural History, Vienna, 1872-81.
Hofburgtheater, Vienna (with Carl von Hasenauer), 1874-88.

Bibliography:
Gottfried Semper, Gottfried Semper: The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, tr. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrmann, Cambridge, 1989.
Wolfgang Herrmann, Gottfried Semper: Theoretische Nachlass an der ETH Zurich, Basel, 1981.
Gottfried Semper: In Search of Architecture, Cambridge, Mass., 1984.
Joseph Rykwert, “Semper and the Conception of Style”, in his The Necessity of Ornament, London, 1982.