Fred Forbát

Who was Fred Forbát?

Alfréd "Fred" Forbát was a Hungarian-born architect with significant work in Germany and Sweden.

He was born to Jewish parents in Pécs, former Austria-Hungary. He studied architecture and art history at the University of Budapest and the Technical University of Munich. From 1920–22 Forbát worked with Walter Gropius and was a lecturer at the Bauhaus in its first incarnation, in Weimar. Forbát was the one who encouraged and recommended the school to his fellow Hungarian Marcel Breuer. After a short time in independent practice, he served from 1925–28 as chief architect of Berlin's contractor and promoter Adolf Sommerfeld. In 1926 he joined The Ring.

In 1929-1931 he was the co-designer, with Walter Gropius, Otto Bartning, Hugo Haring and Paul Rudolf Henning, of the Ringsiedlung Siemensstadt Housing Project, Berlin-Charlottenburg-Nord, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. In 1930 he designed the Mommsenstadion in Berlin-Charlottenburg. In 1928 Forbát received a commission from the Russian government to build communal housing for foreign civil engineers.