Martin Wagner

Vocation

German-American architect, city planner, and author, best known as the driving force behind the construction of modernist housing projects in interwar Berlin. He served as the chief city planner of Berlin from 1925, and most of Berlin's Modernist Housing Estates, now recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were constructed under his leadership. In 1924 he founded the building society GEHAG, which was responsible for seventy percent of Berlin's housing built from 1924 through 1933, amounting to many thousands of residential units. n his German projects Wagner was a frequent collaborator with German landscape architect Leberecht Migge. As the Nazis came to power through the early 1930s, Wagner fell under increasing pressure and suspicion as a committed Social Democrat and longtime member of the SPD. He was expelled from the Deutscher Werkbund in 1933 and decided to leave the country. He spent three years in Turkey in exile. His work there included the city plan for Ankara, and a brief reunion with colleague Bruno Taut. In 1938 Wagner took a position teaching city planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, his immigration to the United States assisted by his colleague Walter Gropius. Wagner took American citizenship in 1944; he served as professor at the GSD until retirement in 1951. He died on 28 May 1957 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Link to Wikipedia biography