Death does not always come as we expect it to; its way of appearing, or the moment in which it arrives surprises us in most situations. Death is not always the most notable aspect in careers that show great achievements in their professional career, and yet knowing about it brings us closer to people, stripping them of the bombastic epic with which their lives were presented.

Deaths that come one night, when someone is pierced by a sword, run over by a tram, murdered in a concentration camp, simply swimming while doing daily exercise, abandoned in the toilets of a station, or senile in a hospital, fill these figures with a humanity that is often forgotten.

This article follows one published a decade ago, which we now update.

Francesco Borromini

Francesco Borromini

1. Francesco Borromini (1677)
Francesco Castelli, known as Francesco Borromini, was born in the small Italian-speaking town of Bissome in southern Switzerland (now part of the Canton of Ticino) on 25 September 1599. His training began in the quarries where his father Giovanni Domenico Castelli worked (his mother Anastasia Garovo), although his training as a sculptor would begin after his move to Milan, where he would work on the construction of the "duomo", the cathedral.

At the age of twenty, he moved to Rome, to take advantage of the opportunity to work on St. Peter's Basilica where a distant relative, Carlo Maderno, worked. Ten years later, after the death of his relative in 1629, he joined the workgroup that was carrying out the extension and restoration of the façade of the Barberini Palace, where he became assistant to Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
From that relationship arose his enmity, whose disputes and rivalry would accompany him throughout his life.

At the age of forty-five, he gained the trust of the Pope and became the main architect of Rome during the pontificate of Innocent X (1644-1655), relegating his eternal rival to the background. A star that would fade when, in the following pontificate with Alexander VII (1655-1667), the one who gained the trust of the Pope was his rival Bernini.

Known as the artist of the Lateran, after the neighbourhood of Rome in which he lived, he is remembered as one of the main figures of the Baroque, with exceptional works in which he plays with perspective, such as the passage in the courtyard of the Spada Palace in Rome.

Known as an honest architect with little interest in material wealth, he is also remembered for his sullen and gloomy character that intensified after losing the commission for the fountain in Piazza Navona and the decision in 1667 to commission the tomb of Pope Alexander VII to Bernini. A decision that plunged him into a deep depression that made him burn a large part of his writings and drawings.

In the hot summer morning of August 2, 1667, Borromini, shortly before turning 68 years old, and trying to find a light, stumbled and fell on the blade of his sword that was hanging over his bed. He was seriously injured and died the next day at around 10 pm on August 3, 1667.

Initially it was not clear whether it was suicide or an accident and given the prohibition that existed at that time to bury those who died by suicide, his body was not buried in San Carlo dei Quattro Fonte, as had been his wish. Today his mortal remains are in the church of San Giovanni dei Florentini (Rome).

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

2. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1778)
The Venetian architect, as he liked to call himself, was born in 1720 in Momigliano di Mestre, near Venice. Like his predecessor, his father was a stonemason and also a Venetian master builder, Angelo Piranesi, and his mother Laura Lucchesi was the sister of Matteo Lucchesi, a well-known architect, an environment that provided him with a careful and complete education in the family environment.

After disputes with his uncle Matteo, his training continued with Giovanni Antonio Sacalfarotto and in parallel with the engraver Carlo Zucchi, in whose studio he learned the technique of etching. At the age of twenty, in 1740, he moved to Rome, although for the next ten years, he would live between his trips to Naples and his returns to Venice to obtain financing.

His first great work would be published in 1749. He was an archaeologist, a visionary architect, a notary of ruins, a chronicler of his time, a defender of Romanity. He understood engraving as the industry of his time that would allow him to spread his ideas and at the same time live without building. His influence was more important in England than in his own country thanks to the educational and tourist pilgrimage of the Grand Tour. For some, his understanding will be achieved, paraphrasing Marguerite Yourcenar, through his black brain, for others, equally through Henri Focillon.

After travelling to Naples with his son Francesco to study the ruins of the three temples of Paestum, death came to Piranesi in his home in Rome on November 9, 1778, at the age of 58. He only trusted in the writings of Titus Livius and his passion for engraving the Roman world. Dying, he defied death as he had done with life: "Repose is unworthy of a citizen of Rome: let us see my models, my drawings and my coppers," are the last words attributed to him.

Piranesi had asked to be buried at the place where the two Romes met, in Santa Maria degli Angeli, the church that Michelangelo had designed on the ruins of the ancient Baths of Diocletian. This was not possible. The funeral was held in Sant'Andrea dalle Fratte, where he was provisionally buried while awaiting a final burial prepared for him by Rezzonico in S. Maria del Priorato sull'Aventino (the only church he had built). His relatives commissioned the sculptor Giuseppe Angelini to make a statue of Piranesi.

Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted

3. Frederick Law Olmsted (1903)
Would New York be the same city without the Central Park project? The architect of this world-famous urban park was Frederick Law Olmsted with his partner Calvert Vaux, after winning the competition with the proposal "Greensward Plan" in 1858. His extensive activity as a landscaper, journalist, botanist and critic made him the father of American landscaping. In addition, among his works are Elm Park in Massachusetts, considered by many to be the first American municipal park, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Cadwalader Park in Trenton, New Jersey and Forest Park in Portland, Oregon.

Olmsted would also have an important journalistic career. In 1850, he traveled to England to visit public gardens, and was greatly impressed by Joseph Paxton's Birkenhead Park, and later published Walks and Conversations of an American Farmer in England in 1852.

In 1895, his dementia forced him to retire. Olmsted moved to Belmont, Massachusetts in 1898, and lived at McLean Hospital, the grounds of which were several times refurbished following his ideas; he even proposed a complete proposal that was never carried out. He remained there in retirement due to senility until his death on August 28, 1903, at the age of 81, and was buried in the old cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut.

Antoni Gaudí

Antoni Gaudí

4. Antoni Gaudí (1926)
The world-renowned Spanish architect, and author of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, ​​died on his way to the church of San Felipe Neri, which he visited daily to pray and meet with his confessor, Father Agustí Mas i Folch. Before arriving, while passing through the Gran Via de las Cortes Catalanas, between the streets of Gerona and Bailén, he was run over by a tram that was only travelling at 10 km/h, but the impact knocked him unconscious. Initially, he was mistaken for a beggar, as he was undocumented and looked austere, in worn and old clothes, he was not immediately helped until a civil guard stopped a taxi that took him to the Hospital de la Santa Cruz. The next day he was recognised by the chaplain of the Sagrada Familia, Father Gil Parés, but it was too late to do anything for him. He died on 10 June 1926, at the age of 73.

Although he had requested that his funeral be a ceremony without pomp, his remains were buried on June 12 in the chapel of Our Lady of Carmen in the crypt of the Sagrada Familia (works for which he left all his capital, which amounted to 50,000 pesetas) after a multitudinous procession through the streets of Barcelona.

Among those attending that multitudinous celebration were the models of his work, the neighbours photographed to make the moulds of the characters on the Nativity façade, or his collaborator, Artigas playing Solomon or Ramón Mestre the bricklayer playing King David.

Adolf Loos

Adolf Loos

5. Adolf Loos (1933)
Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos is considered one of the fathers of modern architecture. Known as Adolf Loos, this Austrian architect trained at the Reichenberg Vocational School and the Dresden Polytechnic without obtaining an architectural degree. He contracted syphilis in the brothels of Vienna, which left him sterile and caused his mother to repudiate him in 1893. That same year he travelled to the United States to visit the World's Fair in Chicago where he stayed for three years working in whatever he could, from dishwasher to journalist. In 1896, after passing through London and Paris, he returned to Vienna where he began to work as an architect.

In 1899 he revolutionised Viennese architecture with the construction of the Café Museum. In 1908 he wrote a famous article called "Ornament and Crime". In 1918, at the end of World War I, the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Masaryk, granted him Czech nationality, which facilitated his divorce from his first wife. That same year he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, from which he recovered in 6 months. In 1919 he married again, this time to the singer and dancer Elsie Altmann, from whom he would also separate seven years later.

His last years were spent travelling and in hospitals, and his last wife was his good friend Claire Beck, whom he would end up divorcing in 1932. In July 1933 he was transferred to a sanatorium in Kalksburg, Austria, and on the evening of 23 August, he died after another heart attack, months before his 63rd birthday.

Shortly afterwards, his friend Arnold Schönberg commented in a letter to his friend and disciple Anton Webern: "A Viennese funeral, from what you tell me: without noise. "It's very painful. Like Mozart, Schubert, Mahler... The only thing missing was the mass grave."

Josep Torres i Clavé

Josep Torres i Clavé

6. Josep Torres i Clavé (1939)
He was one of the young founding members of GATEPAC (Group of Spanish Artists and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture), where he met Josep Lluis Sert and Antoni Bonet Castellana and where a rationalist style for Spanish architecture was promoted, spreading the values ​​of the Modern Movement.

He was director of the School of Architecture of Barcelona between 1936 and 1939. He remained clearly committed to the government of the Second Republic. The Barcelona architect died at the age of 33 during a bombing by the Italian air force in the village of Omellons, near Borges Blanques in the province of Lérida, while supervising the construction of trenches on the front of the Spanish Civil War. He is one of the main figures in the development of the Architectural Avant-garde in the early years of the 20th century in Spain.

Among his most notable works are the Raval Tuberculosis Dispensary (1936) and the City of Rest and Vacations in Castelldefels (1932).

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis

7. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1944)
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was a well-known Jewish artist, architect and educator who was killed in World War II. She was one of the most outstanding women of the Bauhaus for various reasons. She was an exemplary student of the Bauhaus with a wide range of artistic profiles: photography, textile work, architecture, etc... in other words, the prototype of a multidisciplinary artist with exceptional work.

In 1942 Friedl Brandeis was deported to Theresienstadt as a Jew. After being voluntarily deported to join her husband, Friedl spent her last days in Terezín, a town in the Czech Republic known for its concentration camp. There she secretly gave art classes to the children who were imprisoned. In this context, she focused her life on children and their art. Judging by the drawings made by the children, she not only absorbed all the teachings of the Bauhaus but also knew how to transmit them.

Before her deportation in 1944, she gave Raja Engläderova two suitcases containing 5,000 to 6,000 drawings she had made in her classes, which are now in the Jewish Museum in Prague. On 6 October 1944, she was transferred from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, and three days later, on 9 October 1944, Friedl Brandeis was murdered in the concentration camp.

Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier

8. Le Corbusier (1965)
In the last years of his life, the Swiss architect spent his summers in Cap Martin (French Riviera), in the hut a few metres from the E1027 house that Eileen Gray had once designed for Jean Badovici, his publisher. On 27 August 1965, Le Corbusier, aged 77, left the house after breakfast to take his usual bath in the Mediterranean, against the advice of his doctor. Shortly afterwards he was found dead by fishermen, possibly from a heart attack, although the exact cause is still a mystery. His grave is located a few hundred metres further up, in the local cemetery.

It is said that during his last years, he kept the remains of a bone collected after the cremation of his wife, Yvonne Gallis and that he used to rub it as a souvenir.

Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known by his nickname Le Corbusier, was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 1887-1965. He is considered one of the fathers of the Modern Movement in architecture and one of the most important architects of the 20th century, along with Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright. Throughout his long career, he left a great legacy of architecture throughout the world, in countries such as France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Argentina, India and Japan.

Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn

9. Louis Isadore Kahn or Louis Kahn (1974)
His death was strange and unusual, just like his life and his complex family relationships. On Sunday, March 17, 1974, Louis Kahn died of cardiac arrest at the age of 73 in the toilets of the famous Penn Station in New York, after a return trip from Bangladesh. He was not identified until three days after his death, since, for unknown reasons, he had crossed out the details in his passport. During his burial, the children and wives of his three married couples (Esther, his work colleague Anne Tyng, and Harriet Pattison) met for the first time, who were unwittingly related, since the architect had kept him hidden for decades until his death.

One of his sons with Harriet Pattison, Nathaniel Kahn, portrayed the architect's life in a documentary entitled "My Architect: A Son's Journey," which was nominated for an Oscar in 2003.

Louis Isadore Kahn, one of the leading figures of 20th-century architecture, was born on February 20, 1901. He founded his own studio in 1935 and was a professor at the Yale University School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957. His major works include the Salk Institute, the Richards Laboratories, and the Phillips Exeter Academy Library.

Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius

10. Walter Gropius (1969)
Walter Gropius was born in Berlin, the son and grandson of architects. He studied architecture in Munich and Berlin, then worked for three years in the office of Peter Behrens (1907-1910) and then set out on his own. He soon began to make a name for himself as an architect with the Fagus factory project in 1911, which he would strengthen in Bologna in 1914 when he built offices, a machine area, and laboratories for the Werkbund exhibition and exhibited a car project and a compartment for sleeping cars there. However, it was the founding of the famous Bauhaus design school that would mark his life. He served as director there, first in Weimar and then in Dessau, from 1919 to 1928.

From 1933 onwards, the pressure of continuing in Germany became unbearable. In addition to being marked as the inspiration for an internationalist and avant-garde school, he was also attacked by the press and had the Gestapo in his studio on several occasions. In 1934 he decided to accept an invitation to give a lecture in London, and three years later he migrated to the United States in 1937. He remained at Harvard until 1952 when he resigned due to disagreements with the Dean. He continued to receive commissions and carry out projects. He spent his last years travelling and meeting former Bauhaus students everywhere who recognised his work.

The man who would be called the "silver knight" by his postmodern enemies died at his home in his sleep at the age of 86 in Boston on 6 July 1969.

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José Juan Barba (1964) architect from ETSA Madrid in 1991. Special Mention in the National Finishing University Education Awards 1991. PhD in Architecture ETSAM, 2004. He founded his professional practice in Madrid in 1992 (www.josejuanbarba.com). He has been an architecture critic and editor-in-chief of METALOCUS magazine since 1999, and he advised different NGOs until 1997. He has been a lecturer (in Design, Theory and Criticism, and Urban planning) and guest lecturer at different national and international universities (Roma TRE, Polytechnic Milan, ETSA Madrid, ETSA Barcelona, UNAM Mexico, Univ. Iberoamericana Mexico, University of Thessaly Volos, FA de Montevideo, Washington, Medellin, IE School, U.Alicante, Univ. Europea Madrid, UCJC Madrid, ESARQ-U.I.C. Barcelona,...).

Maître de Conférences IUG-UPMF Grenoble 2013-14. Full assistant Professor, since 2003 up to now at the University of Alcalá School of Architecture, Madrid, Spain. And Jury in competitions as Quaderns editorial magazine (2011), Mies van der Rohe Awards, (2010-2024), Europan13 (2015). He has been invited to participate in the Biennale di Venezia 2016 as part "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione".

He has published several books, the last in 2016, "#positions" and in 2015 "Inventions: New York vs. Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Piranesi " and collaborations on "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione", "La Mansana de la discordia" (2015), "Arquitectura Contemporánea de Japón: Nuevos territorios" (2015)...

Awards.-

- Award. RENOVATION OF SEGURA RIVER ENVIRONMENT, Murcia, Sapin, 2010.
- First Prize, RENOVATION GRAN VÍA, “Delirious Gran Vía”, Madrid, Spain, 2010.
- First Prize, “PANAYIOTI MIXELI Award”. SADAS-PEA, for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture Athens, 2005.
- First Prize, “SANTIAGO AMÓN Award," for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture. 2000.
- Award, “PIERRE VAGO Award." ICAC -International Committee of Art Critics. London, 2005.
- First Prize, C.O.A.M. Madrid, 2000. Shortlisted, World Architecture Festival. Centro de Investigación e Interpretación de los Ríos. Tera, Esla y Orbigo, Barcelona, 2008.
- First Prize. FAD AWARD 07 Ephemeral Interventions. “M.C.ESCHER”. Arquin-Fad. Barcelona, Sapin 2007.

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Frederick Law Olmsted. (1822-1903). He was born on April 26, 1822, in Island, New York. Landscape architect, journalist and botanist. He studied at Yale University and after finishing his studies he traveled through Europe and America, learning gardening and agricultural methods. Among his outstanding works, we find Central Park and Prospect Park in New York. As a journalist, he published Walks and Conversations of an American farmer in England in 1852. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted with Calvert Vaux were presented in honour of Andrew Jackson Downing to the contest to be the designers of Central Park. His project solved the problem that Central Park had because of its narrow, rectangular shape. Finally, they were the winners of the competition.

Although the public was satisfied with the creation of the new park, Olmest received a large number of demands for the policy and cost reduction, which caused him in 1861 he leave the Central Park project for a new project: executive secretary of the US Health Commission that treated the injured in the Civil War. His job was to supply the soldiers who were in the middle of war with blankets, food and clothes. In 1863 he traveled to California to manage Mariposa Estate, a gold mining operation.

On his return to New York, in 1865 Vaux and Olmsted created Olmsted, Vaux and Company. It was a defining moment in Olmest's life as he decided that his career would begin to focus on landscape architecture. Together they designed Prospect Park, the park system of New York and Milwaukee and the Niagara Reserve, at Niagara Falls. In Brookline, located in the state of Massachusetts, we highlight the works of Olmest the Emerald Necklace of Boston, the campus of Stanford University and buildings of the World's Columbian Exposition.

In 1872, Olmsted and Vaux decided to finish with the team they had created together, despite having a great demand for projects to be carried out.

Olmsted helped to enhance the architecture of the landscape and to prosper in the United States with his works and ideas so characteristic of the place. Finally, he died on August 28, 1903, at 81 years in Belmont, a town in Massachusetts.

Among other outstanding projects, we find:

- The coordinated system of public parks and avenues of Búfalo (New York).
- The Mount Royal Park, in Montreal (Canada).
- The Emerald Necklace, in Boston (Massachusetts).
- The Cherokee Park including the system of avenues in Louisville (Kentucky).
- Jackson Park, Washington Park and Midway Plaisance in for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
- Part of Detroit Belle Isle Park.
- The gardens of the United States Capitol and the building of George Washington Vanderbilt II.
- The Biltmore Estate, in North Carolina.
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Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, (25 June 1852 – 10 June 1926)  was born in 1852 in Riudoms or Reus, to the coppersmith Francesc Gaudí i Serra (1813–1906) and Antònia Cornet i Bertran (1819–1876). He was the youngest of five children, of whom three survived to adulthood: Rosa (1844–1879), Francesc (1851–1876) and Antoni. Gaudí's family originated in the Auvergne region in southern France. One of his ancestors, Joan Gaudí, a hawker, moved to Catalonia in the 17th century; possible origins of Gaudí's family name include Gaudy or Gaudin.

Gaudí's work was influenced by his passions in life: architecture, nature, and religion. He considered every detail of his creations and integrated into his architecture such crafts as ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork forging and carpentry. He also introduced new techniques in the treatment of materials, such as trencadís which used waste ceramic pieces.

Under the influence of neo-Gothic art and Oriental techniques, Gaudí became part of the Modernista movement which was reaching its peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work transcended mainstream Modernisme, culminating in an organic style inspired by natural forms. Gaudí rarely drew detailed plans of his works, instead preferring to create them as three-dimensional scale models and moulding the details as he conceived them. Gaudí's work enjoys global popularity and continuing admiration and study by architects. His masterpiece, the still-incomplete Sagrada Família, is the most-visited monument in Spain.

On 7 June 1926, Gaudí was taking his daily walk to the Sant Felip Neri church for his habitual prayer and confession. While walking along the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes between Girona and Bailén streets, he was struck by a passing tram and lost consciousness. Assumed to be a beggar because of his lack of identity documents and shabby clothing, the unconscious Gaudí did not receive immediate aid. Eventually some passers-by transported him in a taxi to the Santa Creu Hospital, where he received rudimentary care. By the time that the chaplain of the Sagrada Família, Mosén Gil Parés, recognised him on the following day, Gaudí's condition had deteriorated too severely to benefit from additional treatment. Gaudí died on 10 June 1926 at the age of 73 and was buried two days later.
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Adolf Loos (December 10, 1870, Brno, Moravia - August 23, 1933, Kalsburg, Austria). His father, a craftsman, had a workshop where Adolf obtained his first lessons that were essential during the course of his career.  After several failures trying to enter the school of architecture, he finally started studying at the Professional School of Reichenberg (Austria), and between 1890 and 1893 at the Dresden Polytechnic without obtaining the title of architect at the end. In 1893 he traveled to the United States to see the Universal Exhibition of Chicago, where he completed his training during his stay as he was in contact with the Anglo-Saxon culture which influenced his aesthetic criteria. After visiting Londo and Paris, in 1896 he settled in Vienna working as an architect.

He worked as a furniture designer at the company F.O.Schmidt with his first order the Kohlmarkt Hall in 1897. In 1899 he revolutionized viennese architecture with the construction of the Café Museum and in 1908 wrote his famous article Ornament and crime, where he expounded his idea of ​​dispensing the ornament. He founded his own construction school in 1912, which had to close because of World War I, and in 1920 he was appointed chief architect of the Viennese City Council, resigning in 1924 because of his social principles, moving to Paris for the next five years.

He was a pioneer within the modern movement because he supported the no use of ornamentation and the break with historicism, being a precursor of the architectural rationalism. From his postulates, where he oppose art and utility and saw the architecture only from the utility field, he positioned against the modernists. These had formed the Viennese Secession and held an antagonistic view of architecture. He came into contact with the European artistic avant-gardes of the moment, such as Schönberg or Kokoschka.

The architecture of Adolf Loos is characterized by being functional and take into account the qualities of new materials. For him, architecture is different from the other applied arts, it is the mother of all; having to be functional and dispose of ornamentation.

One of his greatest concerns was to provide humans with a modern life, a western culture with no differences. In his magazine Das Andere, founded in 1903, he reflected all these problems, introducing the concept of Raumplan, where Loos awarded each space a different importance. According to the importance of the room and its vision within the total volume of the building, it had a different size and height. Thus he discovers the concrete space where human life unfolds.

Among his outstanding works we find the intervention at the Coffee Museum (Vienna, 1899), the Villa Karma (Switzerland, 1903-1906), the Steiner houses (Vienna, 1910), the Goldman Tailors and Salatsch, also known as Loos House, (Vienna, 1910) and the project Chicago Tribune Column (1922). Amongst his last works, some of them built in France, are the Tristan Tzara House (Paris, 1926), the Moller House (Vienna, 1928) and the Müller House (Prague, 1930), becoming an important influential teacher in the architectures of Gropius, Le Corbusier and other postwar architects.

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Josep Torres i Clavé (Barcelona, ​​Spain, 1906 - Els Omellons, Spain, 1939), was a Spanish architect and designer. He was the nephew of the architect Jaume Torres i Grau. He began his professional career with the architects Josep Lluís Sert and Antoni Bonet, with whom he founded MIDVA (Mobles i decoració per a la Vivienda actual). In 1924, he began studying architecture at the School of Barcelona. In 1927-28, at the age of 21, he made a study trip to Italy, together with Josep Lluís Sert, where he learned about the works of the great classics. Le Corbusier's passage through Barcelona on his way to Madrid and the Can Dalmau exhibition were determining factors in his formation as a modern architect. He finished his studies on August 26, 1929.

After finishing his studies, he will be one of the founding members of GATEPAC (Group of Spanish Artists and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture) —a group created as the Spanish branch of the International Congress of Modern Architecture, CIAM—, founded in Zaragoza in 1930 by initiative of Fernando García Mercadal to promote the rationalist style in Spanish architecture, with three sections (central group (Madrid group), north (Basque) and eastern (Catalan) where he used the denomination of GATCPAC, Grup d'Arquitectes i Tècnics Catalans pel Progress of Contemporary Architecture). In this association that spread the principles of the modern movement, Torres Clavé was considered one of the best cartoonists.

Parallel to their constitution as a group, they opened a place on Passeig de Gràcia for exhibitions and promoted the magazine AC (1931-1937), Documents of Contemporary Activity, where they carried out an important task of dissemination and criticism, becoming the soul of the publication; It presented the work of architects and artists such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Erich Mendelsohn, Van Doesburg, Neutra, Lubetkin, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. He was also director of the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Barcelona during the years 1936 to 1939.

On July 30, 1936, he created the Sindicat d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (S.A.C), of which he was general secretary, and with which he would actively participate in reconstruction works, new schools and redevelopment. He was an active member of the PSUC.

Among his most important works are the Casa Bloc (1932-1936, Paseo de Torres i Bages 91-105, in Sant Andreu), and the Tuberculosis Dispensary (1934-1938, at number 10 of the San Bernat passage), both in Barcelona and made together with Josep Lluís Sert and Joan Baptista Subirana. In the field of urban planning, he actively participated in the "future Barcelona urbanization project" of 1932 (subsequently baptized as the Macià Plan), presented by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mercadal, Sert, among others, as well as the Ciutat de Repós i Vacances de Castelldefels (1932). Within his designs, there are proposals for furniture that are still reproduced today, such as the chair with a rattan back that became famous or a floor lamp, pieces designed for his family circle.

He died on the front in the town of Omellons, near Borges Blanques, in 1939 during the Spanish Civil War while building trenches on the Lerida front.
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Friedl Dicker (Vienna, July 30, 1898-Auschwitz, October 9, 1944). She began her studies, 1914, in photography and printing techniques at the Graphic Arts Research Institute. The following year, she became interested in the textile world entering the Faculty of fabrics of the Royal School of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 1916 she entered the private art school of Johannes Itten, who will be one of the protagonists of the future Bauhaus.

Three years later (1919), she entered the Bauhaus school in Weimar where she continued his apprenticeship. There she carried out works of textile design, and binding and participated in typography workshops. She designed the costumes and sets for important plays like "The Merchant of Venice" by William Shakespeare.

After finishing his studies in 1923, she founded the Werkstätten Bildender Kunst or "Workshops of Visual Arts" in Berlin together with Franz Singer, former partner of the Bauhaus.

In 1926 she returned to her hometown, Vienna, and there she founded a new studio, the Singer & Dicker, together with Franz Singer. Despite not having obtained any degree in architecture, in the new studio, they developed building projects, interior design and furniture, with which they won several awards.

In 1931, the Singer & Dicker studio fell apart and they began their solo careers. Friedl Dicker began to practice as an educator in Vienna and joined the anti-fascist movement. In 1934, she was arrested for developing activities related to communism.

After being released, she moved to Prague where Nazism was at its peak, something that would change the course of Friedl's life. She started with her textile works at the Spiegler & Sons factory and she, as a designer, received the award at the Vystava 38 Nachod exhibition.

In 1942, she received an order of deportation and in that same year she was transferred to Terezín, a town in the Czech Republic known for the concentration camp installed during her term during the Second World War, and in 1944 she was deported. Finally, Frield died at the age of 46, in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
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Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland on October 6th, 1887. He is best known as Le Corbusier, one of the most important architects of the XX Century that together with Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright rise up as the fathers of Modern Architecture. In his long career, he worked in France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Argentina, India and Japan.

Jeanneret was admitted to the Art School of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1902. He knew Charles l’Éplattenier, his first teacher, and he became interested in architecture. He built his first house, Villa Fallet, in 1906, and one year later he set out on his first great journey to Italy. From 1908-1909 he worked in Perret Bother’s Studio, where he focussed on the employment of the concrete, and from 1910-1911 he coincided with Mies van der Rohe in this studio in Berlin.

In 1917, Charles Édouard Jeanneret set up finally in Paris. The next year he met the painter Amedée Ozenfant and he displayed his first paintings and wrote his first book, Après le Cubismo. In 1919 he founded the magazine l´Esprit nouveau, where he published unnumbered articles, signing with the pseudonym Le Corbusier for the first time.

He opened his own Studio in 1922, in the number 35 of the rue de Sèvres. In this decade when his laboratory epoch started he carried out a great number of activities as a painter, essayist, and writer. But also as an architect, he planned some of the most recognizable icons of modern architecture and developed the principles of the free plan. Some of these works are the Villa Roche-Jeanneret, the Villa Savoye in Poissy, and the Siedlungweissenhof’s houses built in Stuttgart in 1927. It should be pointed out that at the same time; he set out the “five points” of the architecture.

Le Corbusier projected “The contemporary three million population city” in 1922 and in 1925 put forward the Voisin plan of Paris, which is one of his most important urban proposals. Three years later, in 1928, through his initiative, the CIAM was created and in 1929 he published his first edition of the Oeuvre Complète.

In the 30s, he collaborated with the magazine Plans and Prélude, where he became enthusiastic about urbanism and he started, in 1930, to elaborate the drawings of the “Radiant City” as a result of the “Green City” planned for Moscu, his project would be summarized in the “Radiant Villa”, which was enclosed with the projects for Amberes, Stockholm, and Paris. By 1931 he presented Argel, a proposal that composed the Obus Plan. And in 1933 the 4th CIAM passed and there he edited the Athens Document.

Le Corbusier, in 1943, developed the “Three Human Establishments Doctrine” and founded the Constructors Assembly for Architectural Renovation (ASCORAL). He made the project the Unite d´habitation of Marsella in 1952, which was the first one of a series of similar buildings. At the same time, the works of Chandigarh in India began, where he planned the main governmental buildings. Nevertheless, in the same decade, he worked in France too, in the Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp, in the convent of La Tourette in Éveux, Jaoul’s houses in Neuilly and the Unites d´habitation of Rézé-lès-Nantes, Briey-en-Forêt and Firminy.

He wrote and published his worldwide known study of the Modulor in 1948 followed by a second part in 1953. Meanwhile the next Le Corbusier’s books had a more autobiographic nature, among them the Le poème de l'angle droit (1955), l'Atelier de la recherche patiente (1960) and Mise aupoint (1966) stand out.

Le Corbusier, at the end of his life, created many projects that would not be built, for example, a calculus center for Olivetti in Rho, Milan; a congress in Strasbourg, the France embassy in Brasilia and a new hospital in Venice.

He died drowned on the 27th of August of 1965 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

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Louis Isadore Kahn is born in Pernow – formerly in Russia, but now Pärnu in Estonia – on February 20, 1901 by the name of Leiser-itze Schmulowsky. In 1906, the family immigrates to Philadelphia. His father changes the family name to Kahn in 1915, when the family is awarded US citizenship. Kahn develops his artistic talents early on, and is able to draw beautifully from a young age.

In his early years, Kahn earns money playing the piano at neighbourhood theatres. He keeps this up during his university years, until he graduates in 1924 with a bronze medal for ‘superior excellence’ and starts working as an architect.

In 1928, he leaves on a trip to Europe. In the Netherlands, he learns about modern architecture, such as the functionalist design of Johannes Duiker's Sanatorium Zonnestraal in Hilversum. He also gets to see the architecture of Hendrik Berlage, Michel de Klerk and Willem Dudok.

Family life and work 1930 - 1955
Back in the US, Louis Kahn marries Esther Virginia Israeli, a research assistant in the field of neurology. Five years later, Kahn is awarded the title of architect and starts working from home on his own projects. In 1940, Esther gives birth to their first daughter, Sue Ann. In 1945, Kahn has an office with a few employees. Kahn develops a tough work ethic: he often only rests for a few hours, sometimes sleeping at the office to be able to continue working straight away.

In the office, Louis Kahn and architect Anne Tyng, who is nearly 20 years younger, become entangled in an affair. Because of his attitude towards work, Louis Kahn is often away from home, keeping the two worlds of family life and work strictly separate. In 1950, Kahn leaves on another extended trip to southern Europe and Egypt, where he draws ancient Roman and Egyptian treasures. Kahn describes the beauty of these structures in letters to Anne Tyng. In 1954, Anne Tyng gives birth to Kahn's second child: Alexandra.

International fame: 1955 - 1974
In 1958, Kahn is introduced to landscape-architect Harriet Pattison (born in 1928) at a party. A relationship develops between the architect and Pattison, resulting in the birth of Kahn's third child and only son, Nathaniel. One year later, Kahn attends the conference of a prominent group of international architects, who have come together in Otterloo, the Netherlands, under the name of Team X (Team Ten). This group includes Dutch architects Aldo van Eyck and Jaap Bakema.

In the 1960s and 70s, Kahn finally takes his place on the international stage with designs for government buildings, museums, laboratories, libraries, private homes and religious buildings. One high point is the government building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which is only completed in 1983, years after his death. In the last decade of his life, Kahn visits the Indian subcontinent no fewer than 40 times. On 17 March 1974, returning from one of these trips, Louis Kahn dies in a toilet at Penn Station in New York. For uncertain reasons, he had crossed out his name in his passport, as a result of which he can only be identified a few days later.

21st century: Kahn's legacy lives on
Years after Louis Kahn dies, his son Nathaniel sets out to investigate his father's legacy. His film ‘My Architect’ (2003) earns him an Oscar nomination.

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Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was born in Berlin on 18 May 1883 (Passed away on 5 July 1969), son and grandson of architects, whose influence led him to study architecture in Munich and Berlin. After completing his studies, he worked in Peter Behrens' practice, where he later became independent. Between 1910 and 1915, he worked primarily on the rehabilitation and expansion of the Fagus Factory in Alfeld. This work pioneered modern architecture its thin metal structures, large glazed surfaces, flat roofs and orthogonal forms.

In addition, Gropius founded the famous Bauhaus School, a design school that taught students to use modern and innovative materials to create buildings, furniture and original and functional objects. He was in charge of it first in Weimar and then in Dessau, from 1919 to 1928.

From 1926, Gropius was intensely devoted to the design of housing blocks, which saw the solution to social and urban problems, in addition to betting for the rationalization in the construction industry, which would allow building faster and more economically.

Before the First World War, Gropius was already part of a movement of aesthetic renovation, represented by the Deutscher Werkbund, which aimed to unite art with industrial design.

After the war, Gropius, in his role as director of the Sächsischen Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) and Sächsischen Hochschule für bildene Kunst (Superior School of Fine Arts), decides to merge the two schools under the name of "Staatliches Bauhaus "combining their academic goals and adding an architecture section. The building constructed for the school itself is a symbol of the most representative ideas of the Bauhaus: "form follows function".

In 1934 Gropius was forced to leave Germany due to the Nazi aggressions suffered by the Bauhaus and his work. He lived and worked for three years in England moving to America later, where he was a professor of architecture at the Harvard Design School. In 1946 The Architects Collaborative, Inc., a group of young architects known as TAC, of which he was responsible for the direction and training of the members for several years.

Walter Gropius died in Boston in 1969, at the age of 86 years old. His buildings reflect the style of the Bauhaus, with new materials used in their construction giving them a modern look, unknown at that time. Smooth facades and clear lines lack unnecessary decorative elements. This architecture has made him one of the key leaders of the so-called 'International Style' in architecture.
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Published on: November 1, 2024
Cite: "Dying is never easy. Ten architects and their deaths" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/dying-never-easy-ten-architects-and-their-deaths> ISSN 1139-6415
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