Louis Sullivan

Louis Henri Sullivan ( born September 3, 1856 in Boston, Massachusetts, † April 14, 1924 in Chicago, Illinois ) was an American architect.

Life

Sullivan moved to an abandoned studies at MIT and intermediate stations in New York, Philadelphia, in 1873, to Paris, to his studies to perform there at the École des Beaux -Arts on. At the same time he works in the Paris studio of Émile Vaudremer ( a follower of Viollet -le- Duc, a pioneer of the Form Follows Function Movement). After a short time, however, Sullivan traveled to Italy, where he completed his studies at age 19. He returned to America and worked in the Chicago office of William Le Baron Jenney, who is known as one of the fathers of the skyscraper. The subsequent cooperation with the German -born engineer Dankmar Adler led in 1881 to the same office Sullivan & Adler, which was formative for the so-called Chicago School. This office also Frank Lloyd Wright five years worked. The built in nearly 20 years until the turn of the century buildings of Sullivan gained notoriety and architecture history. 1895 Adler left the office. After Sullivan succeeded in 1899 with his most famous work, the Carson Pirie Scott department store building still a great success. After the turn of the century was over also the professional highlight of Sullivan with the time of the Chicago School.

Also in the architectural and design history, he came in with a quote from his article The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered in Lippincott 's Magazine in 1896: form follows function. Translated Accordingly this means as much as " The form of a building or an object derived from its function. " However, he is citing the saying of his partner Dankmar Adler, who in turn had taken it over, mutatis mutandis, by Henri Labrouste.

Sullivan died alone, penniless and heavily addicted to alcohol after his star had fallen steadily over the years of separation with his partner eagle. After his death in poverty and was buried with the financial support of Frank Lloyd Wright at the Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Today there still remembers a memorial stone erected in 1929 to Louis Henri Sullivan. It is worth noting that on the one hand very simple shape, on the other hand give the side worked out " skyscrapers " a tribute to the former co-founder of the Chicago School. Later he sat Frank Lloyd Wright with his book Genius and the mobocracy also a literary monument and designated therein as the " pencil " in the hand of his old "Dear Master".

Works (selection)

Writings

• The Autobiography of an Idea. With a foreword by Claude Bragdon, Press of the American Institute of Architects, New York 1926
• Ornament and Architecture ( = A system of architectural ornament ). Foreword by John and Susan Glover Godlewski Zukowsky. Essay by Lauren S. Weingarden. Wasmuth, Tübingen 1990

Movies

• Sullivan's Banks, directed by Heinz Emigholz, released in 2007 on DVD