New information about the education of architect Robert Marfeld in the context of the influence of European architecture on the formation of the architectural identity of Irkutsk

Abstract

This article aims to highlight the fact about the influence of European education on the work of the Russian architect with German roots, Robert Marfeld. On the basis of the collected bibliographic and archival materials, his projects and the work of his teacher - the famous Austrian architect Theophil Hansen, who taught a Master class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, worked with the greatest Austrian architects of the mid-19th century - are studied. In this context, a project of a vocational school in Irkutsk, carried out by Marfeld, is considered. The stylistic features of Marfeld’s architecture, especially in the initial period of creativity, are in many ways similar to the architecture of Hansen and his school. This is also due to the trends in architecture and construction of that period, especially in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Leading Russian architects were educated in Europe. European architects taught in St. Petersburg. Thus, the work of German and Austrian architects in Russia and in Irkutsk played a significant role in the formation of architectural identity, which contains many different characteristics, which was highlighted in previous articles by the authors, but also features inherent in the styles developed by the German and Austrian architectural schools.