Yona Friedman

Yona Friedman was born in Budapest, Hungary (1923).
The artist studied at the Technical University in Budapest, before continuing his training from 1945 to 1948 at the Technion in Haifa, Israel, where he worked as an architect until 1957. In 1953-54, he met Konrad Wachsmann, whose studies on prefabrication techniques and three-dimensional structures had a considerable influence on him. In 1954, together with some inhabitants of Haifa, Friedman embarked upon an initial experiment involving housing designed by the occupant, but this project never reached completion. In 1956, at the 10th International Congress of Modern Architecture (ICMA) in Dubrovnik, modernism was called into question by his universalist approach and his belief in progress. At the Congress, when people were taking “mobile architecture “to mean the mobility of the dwelling” the “mobile home“ for example” Friedman exhibited for the first time the principles of an architecture encompassing the on-going changes required to provide “social mobility”, based on dwellings and town-planning provisions that could be composed and re-composed, depending on the intentions of the occupants and residents. The Dubrovnik debate gave rise to several think-tanks within the International Congresses, as well as beyond them. Thus it was that in December 1958, Friedman founded the Mobile Architecture Study Group (MASG) which, up until 1962, would focus on the adaptation of architecture to the changes occurring in modern life. He was joined by Kühne, Otto, Ruhnau, Hansen, Frieden and, after 1960, Schulze-Fielitz and Maymont.
He received many awards along his carrier, in 1967 Grand Prix de Recherche et Formes de Demain, Paris, FR, in 1972 Architecture Award of the Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, DE and in 1976 he was dressed up as Honorary member of the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten,Amsterdam, NL

His works are in various PUBLIC COLLECTIONS, United States, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York City, NY, Poland, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Warsaw, France, Musée d’Art Contemporain Lyon, Lyon and Italy, MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome.