Erich Mendelssohn, an important figure in modern architecture, contributed to the interwar architecture of Germany and the nascent English modernism; he also managed to build a lot in Palestine and the United States. The works of foreign masters of this level on the territory of the former USSR are rare for the 20th century, therefore, the situation with the substation of the Krasnoe Znamya textile factory (the second half of the 1920s), which continues to collapse against the background of vigorous developed”territory of the enterprise. You can learn more about the situation in the article by Pavel Gerasimenko.
Erich Mendelsohn was born on March 21, 1887 in East Prussia, now his homeland is the Polish city of Olsztyn. After a short study at the Faculty of Economics, he received an architectural education in Berlin, as well as in Munich, where he met the artists of the Blue Rider expressionist association. During the First World War, he served as an engineer, and at the front he created a series of visionary drawings: the streamlined dynamic forms of these factories, stations and elevators revealed the limits of the possibilities of reinforced concrete. Based on these studies, more precisely, drawings of an imaginary observatory (1917), Mendelssohn's most famous project appeared - the building of the astronomical observatory and astrophysical laboratory "Einstein's Tower" in Potsdam (1920-1924), in which sculptural streamlined forms are combined with the functionality of the layout.
Collaborating with Richard Neutra, the hat factory in Luckenwald (1921-1923) demonstrates another version of Expressionism: "angular", with the use of brick (although reinforced concrete still plays a major role there). More restrained, but no less spectacular are the large buildings of Mendelssohn - the building of the publishing house Mosse (1921–1923) outlined with energetic horizontal lines and the multifunctional complex WOGA with the cinema “Universum” (1927–1931) in Berlin, the Shocken department store in Chemnitz (1928–1929) and a lot others. The power station of the Krasnoye Znamya factory also belongs to this series.
In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, Erich Mendelssohn traveled through the Netherlands to Great Britain, where, together with Sergei Chermaev, he designed several private houses and an example of resort architecture - the “De La Warr” pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea (1934–35) on the shore seas,
Since 1935, Mendelssohn lived and worked in Palestine, where he implemented many projects, including large ones - for example, hospitals in Haifa (1938) and the Anglo-Palestinian Bank in Jerusalem (nowadays - the National Bank of Israel, 1938–39), taking into account natural and cultural context of the region. In 1941, the architect moved to the United States, where he designed and built hospitals, synagogues, private houses, and taught at the University of California at Berkeley. He died in San Francisco in 1953.
