Gottfried Semper

Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. He was also one of the major figures in the controversy surrounding the polychrome architectural style of ancient Greece. He wrote extensively on the origins of architecture, especially in his book The Four Elements of Architecture (1851), which proposed a theory of architecture based on four fundamental elements: hearth, roof, enclosure, and mound. He also designed works at various scales, from urban interventions such as the redesign of the Ringstraße in Vienna, to a baton for Richard Wagner. His unrealised design for an opera house in Munich was, without permission, adapted by Wagner for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Semper was born into a well-to-do industrialist family in Altona, which was then part of the Duchy of Holstein and is now a district of Hamburg. He studied historiography and mathematics at Göttingen and architecture at Munich under Friedrich von Gärtner. He travelled to Paris, Italy, and Greece to study the architecture and designs of antiquity. He became interested in the polychromy debate, which centered on the question whether buildings in ancient Greece and Rome had been colorfully painted or not. He supported the idea of polychromy based on his investigation of pigments on the Trajan's column in Rome. In 1834, he obtained a post as professor of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. He designed several buildings in Dresden, including the Hoftheater (later known as the Semperoper), which burned down in 1869 and was rebuilt by his son Manfred Semper to his father's plans. He also designed the Zwinger Gallery and the Synagogue. He was a friend and supporter of Richard Wagner, who also lived in Dresden at that time. In 1849, he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden, a democratic revolt against the conservative government of Saxony. He was considered a leading agitator and ringleader and was forced to flee the city after the rebellion collapsed. He went first to Zürich and later to London, where he taught at the Royal Academy of Arts. He returned to Germany after the 1862 amnesty granted to the revolutionaries. In 1863, he moved to Vienna, where he was appointed as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. He was involved in the planning and design of the Ringstraße, a grand boulevard that encircled the old city center. He designed several buildings along the Ringstraße, including the Burgtheater, the Museum of Art History, and the Museum of Natural History. He also designed an opera house for Munich, which was never built but influenced Wagner's design for his own opera house in Bayreuth. Semper died in Rome in 1879 at the age of 75. He was buried at the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. His legacy as an architect and theorist is widely recognized and admired. He influenced many architects of his time and later generations, such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Le Corbusier, and Aldo Rossi.