Sigfried Giedion

Sigfried Giedion

Swiss architectural historian. Born in Prague, he attended the University of Zurich and earned a doctorate in art history from the University of Munich. He taught at the University of Zurich and at Harvard University and, later, at ETH in Zurich. With his wife, Carola Giedion-Welcker, he befriended James and Nora Joyce in the 1930s and was instrumental in JJ's consultation of the ophthalmologist Vogt and in enabling the Joyce family's return to Zurich in 1940. A prolific author and lecturer, his most famous book was Space, Time and Architecture: the Growth of a New Tradition (1941). He died suddenly in Zurich in April 1968. William Brockman