La Maison de la Publicité, a High Tech Architecture Ahead of its Time

Oscar Nitzchke (1900-1991) was a German architect who was introduced to architecture in Switzerland before completing his training in Paris in 1920. After his first two years at the Beaux-Arts (Fine Art studies) he entered Le Corbusier’s studio and began his career as an architect. Later, he explored the potentialities of Perret’s rationalist constructive logic, breaking with many currents of the time. In 1936, he proposed the project of La Maison de la Publicité in Paris to a private client, a project that was not completed. Oscar Nitzchke also worked with Paul Nelson and Frantz-Philippe Jourdain on another unrealised project, the Palais de la Découverte, whose organic forms and roofs suspended from cables inaugurated a repertoire far removed from Perret’s orthogonality.

Before the Second World War, he emigrated to the United States to work at the age of 38 with Harrison & Abromovitz in New York. He was one of the passers of the ideas of modern European architecture to the United States. It is in his third country of adoption that he finally asserted himself as an architect capable of designing ambitious and recognized projects.
Between 1949 and 1953, Nitzchke realized for Harrison and Max Abramovitz what remains his major work. He designed all the construction elements, the hall and the facade of the Alcoa headquarters in Pittsburgh. A project hailed by Marcel Lods as the first classic of metal architecture. For this thirty-story skyscraper, he broke away from the rigid standards of American curtain walls to exploit the plasticity of deep drawn aluminum and establish a clever play of light and shadow. He is also best known for his work for Wallace K. Harrison designing the United Nations headquarters in New York and the Los Angeles Opera House.