Werner Joseph Wittkower

Werner Joseph Wittkower was born in 1903 in Berlin

Wittkower was born in Berlin in 1903 to a Jewish family. His parents were Henry Wittkower and Gertrude Ansbach. His older brother Rudolf Wittkower became an art historian.

He studied art history and archeology at the universities of Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1922 he began studying architecture at the technical college in Stuttgart under Paul Bonatz and Paul Schmitthenner.

He worked in Berlin in the office of architect Richard Döcker and for a building company that planned housing. After the Nazis took power, he married Eva Fürst in September 1933 and moved to the Land of Israel. During World War Two he worked as a civilian for the British army.

With Nahum Salkind he won first prize in the competition for the old Tel Aviv central bus station. He served on the Tel Aviv planning committee from 1946 to 1954. In the 1950s he drew up the master plan for the Ramat Aviv campus of Tel Aviv University and then designed many projects along the Tel Aviv coast, including Gordon Pool and hotels.

In the 1970s two of his employees, Israel Stein and Arie Adiv, became his partners. He died in Tel Aviv in 1997.