Rosenberg, Eugene 1907 - 1990

Eugene Rosenberg [also known as Evzen Rosenberg] was born into a Jewish family in Veľké Topol'cany, Austria-Hungary [now Topol'cany, Slovakia], on 24 February 1907.  He studied engineering  at the State Industrial School for Building in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia from 1920 to 1924 and attended the Technical University in Brno from 1924 to 1926; the Technical University in Prague from 1926 to 1928; the Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in 1928 and 1930 to 1932. In 1929 he employed in Le Corbusier's studio in Paris where he worked on designs for the Villa Savoye and the Centrosoyus building.

In 1932 he was awarded his Diploma in Architecture and Town Planning and from 1932 to 1938 worked on various architectural projects in Prague and Topol'cany.  In March 1939, three days before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, he fled to England.

Soon after his arrival in England, he obtained a teaching post on Department of Civic Design at Liverpool University and, following the outbreak of war in 1939, worked with a team designing munition workers' hostels.  In the summer of 1940 he was arrested "apparently on the pretext of an unguarded remark overheard and misinterpreted" [Powers, Dictionary of National Biography] and deported to Australia where he spent two years in internment camps].

He returned to England in 1942 and was initially was employed in the office of Jane Drew (1911-1996).  He then worked with Rodney Thomas on the ‘Rebuilding Britain’ exhibition, organised by the Royal Institute of British Architects and held at the National Gallery in London in February 1943. In 1944 he formed a partnership Francis Reginald Stevens (F.R.S.) Yorke (1906-1962) with whom he had already worked on projects following his his move to England.  They were soon to be joined by the Finnish-born architect Cyril Leonard Sjöström Mardall (1909-1994). The resultant partnership, York, Rosenberg, Mardall [later YRM] was to become one of the dominant architectural practices in Britain in the the post-war years. 

Rosenberg was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1948  and retired from practice in 1975.  He died at his home, 9 Chelwood House, Gloucester Square, Westminster, London on 21 November 1990.