Great Architects: Fyodor Ivanovich Lidval

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Baron Fyodor Ivanovich Lidval (Johan Fredrik Lidvall, Swedish: Johan Fredrik Lidvall; May 20 (June 1), 1870 — March 14, 1945) was a Russian-Swedish architect of Swedish citizenship and origin, an academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts. F. I. Lidval was born in Saint Petersburg. In 1882, he graduated from the primary school at the Evangelical Swedish Church of Saint Catherine, and then from the Second Petersburg Real School (in 1888). He studied for two years at the Baron Stieglitz School of Technical Drawing. During vacations, Fyodor Lidval, like his brothers, twice served in the Royal Life Guards Regiment in Stockholm. From 1890 to 1896, Fyodor Lidval was a student in the architectural department of the Higher Art School at the Imperial Academy of Arts, where from 1894 to 1896 he studied in the workshop of architect L. N. Benois. He graduated from the Higher Art School with the title of artist-architect. The most productive period of Lidval’s creativity is associated with Saint Petersburg. Since 1899, he became a member of the Petersburg Society of Architects. In 1907, a special commission for awarding prizes for the best facades awarded Lidval a silver medal for the facade of N. A. Meltzer’s house (corner of Bolshaya Konyushennaya Street and Volynsky Lane) and an honorary diploma for the facade of A. F. Zimmerman’s income house (corner of Kamennoostrovsky Prospect and Vologodskaya Street). More than 30 buildings and structures were built in Saint Petersburg according to his designs. Lidval’s works began to play a significant role in the architecture of Saint Petersburg in the 1900s. In the first stage of his creativity (1897–1907), he was a bright representative of the "Northern Modern" style; his pursuits during these years were close to the aspirations of Scandinavian and Finnish architects. In 1918, ruined by the revolution, F. I. Lidval left for Stockholm, where he had sent his family a year earlier. After moving to Sweden, F. I. Lidval worked at the company of the famous architect Albin Stark and designed 16 signature houses in Stockholm, as well as participated in the development of projects for another 7 buildings (mainly as an interior designer). His first independent project was two residential buildings on Tysta Gatan (No. 3 and No. 5, 1922), whose appearance combines motifs characteristic of Lidval’s Petersburg period and Swedish architecture in the Swedish Grace style, distinguished by modesty and restraint. Among other projects he realized in Stockholm are the Shell oil company building on Birger Jarlsgatan and a house at the corner of Torsgatan and Saint Eriksgatan. Also, in the early 1930s, F. I. Lidval designed several residential buildings in Stockholm in the functionalism style. He died in 1945 as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried in Stockholm at the Djursholm Cemetery.

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