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Wachsmann, Konrad (Ludwig)
(b Frankfurt an der Oder, 16 May 1901; d Los Angeles, CA, 25 Nov 1980). American architect of German birth. He began his career in 1917 as an apprentice cabinetmaker and carpenter, and, already a skilled craftsman, he undertook more formal academic studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin in 1922. During 1923–4 he studied under Heinrich Tessenow at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in Dresden, and the following year he was a ‘master student’ under Hans Poelzig at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Through Poelzig in 1926 he went to work in Niesky, Silesia, at Christoph and Unmack, then probably the largest manufacturer of prefabricated wooden buildings in Europe; for the first time he experienced the potential of the industrial production of buildings, which he described as a ‘revelation’. In 1929, on the strength of a commission to design a house for the scientist Albert Einstein at Caputh (see Wachsmann, 1930, p. 95), he resigned his position as chief designer at Christoph and Unmack to set up private practice in Berlin; this was, however, unsuccessful because of the Depression.
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