Forty years ago, architect Antonín Raymond died

New Hope (USA)/Prague - In the United States, where he spent a significant part of his life, architect Antonín Raymond passed away on November 21, 1976. However, this Czech native achieved the greatest recognition in Japan, where he worked in the 1920s and 1930s. Following the devastating earthquake in 1923, he significantly contributed to the reconstruction of Tokyo. Although he left the country with the rise of nationalism, he returned after the end of World War II and helped with the reconstruction of Japan.

The fates of the son of a Jewish merchant from Kladno, Alois Reimann, which were recalled a few years ago by David Vávra even in two episodes of the series Šumné stopy, were not lacking in dramatic moments. As the treasurer of the student union, for example, he embezzled a significant amount from the society's treasury and shortly thereafter traveled to the USA in 1910, where he gained experience, among others, with the famous Cass Gilbert during the construction of the first skyscraper in New York; he later became an assistant to Frank Lloyd Wright.

During World War I, he assisted the Czechoslovak resistance and collaborated with people around Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. In 1919, he traveled to Japan, where he was one of the first to build with reinforced concrete; according to architects, he managed to connect traditional Japanese elements with modern concrete buildings. In the 1930s, he found inspiration in the functionalism of Le Corbusier. Since 1926, he also served as honorary consul in Tokyo, which he left at the end of the 1930s. On his last journey to the USA, he saw his family for the last time, who perished in the Holocaust.