Yona Friedman
Yona Friedman (5 June 1923 – 20 February 2020) was a Hungarian-born French architect, urban planner and designer. He was influential in the late 1950s and early 1960s, best known for his theory of "mobile architecture". In 2018, on his 95th birthday, he was awarded the Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts.
Also recorded as Yona Fried
Yona Friedman

Napuort · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Full name
- Friedman János.
- Born
- 1923. · Budapest.
- Died
- 2020. · Los Angeles.
- Nationality
- France and Hungary.
- Occupation
- architect, sociologist, urban planner, designer, illustrator and photographer.
- Fields
- architecture.
- Education
- Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
- Honours
- Frederick Kiesler Prize.
- Languages
- French and Hungarian.
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Yona Friedman (5 June 1923 – 20 February 2020) was a Hungarian-born French architect, urban planner and designer. He was influential in the late 1950s and early 1960s, best known for his theory of "mobile architecture". In 2018, on his 95th birthday, he was awarded the Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts.
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gnd · 6527546-9 · wikidata · Q542741 · wikipedia · Yona Friedman
In this article
Early years
Early years
Yona Friedman studied at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The recorded working language is French and Hungarian. The field of work recorded is architecture. Work by Yona Friedman is recorded in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, Fonds national d'art contemporain and Nieuwe Instituut. Distinctions recorded are Frederick Kiesler Prize.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1923, into an ethnic Jewish family, which posed him problems because of the anti-Semitic quota laws at universities, Friedman survived the Second World War by escaping the Nazi roundups of Jews, and he lived for about a decade in the city of Haifa in Israel before moving permanently to Paris in 1957. He became a French citizen in 1966. In 1956, at the Xth International Congress of Modern Architecture in Dubrovnik, his "Manifeste de l'architecture mobile" contributed to question definitely the daring will planning to architectural design and urbanism. It was during that conference, and thanks especially to the youth of the Team 10, that "mobile architecture" was coined in the sense of "mobility of living." With the example of "Ville spatiale", Friedman set out – for the first time – the principles of an architecture capable of understanding the constant changes that characterize the "social mobility" and based on "infrastructure" that provide housing. Planning rules could be created and recreated, according to the need of the inhabitants and residents. Its focus on people themselves arises from its direct experience of homeless refugees, first in European cities facing war and disaster and later in Israel, where, in the early years of the State, thousands of people landed every day, with housing problems.
Maturity
Maturity
In 1958, Friedman founded the Groupe d'études de architecture mobile (GEAM) which dissolved in 1962. In 1963, he developed the idea of a city bridge and participated actively in the cultural climate and utopian architecture of the 1960s known as the "Age of megastructures". From the mid nineteen sixties on he taught at MIT, and Princeton, Harvard and Columbia universities. In the following decade he worked for the United Nations and UNESCO through the dissemination of self-building manuals in African countries, South America and India. Despite the perennial utopian label, Friedman said: "I have always tried, in architectural studies, to develop projects that were feasible." In 1978, he was commissioned to design the Lycée Bergson in Angers, France, completed in 1981. On this occasion he published a procedure in which the distribution and arrangement of all the architectural elements were designed and decided by future users. Because even non-professionals can understand and apply his method, he wrote also how to comics. Interest in the issue of participation brought Friedman's work to the attention of architects like Giancarlo De Carlo and Bernard Rudofsky. In 1987, in Madras, India, Friedman completed the Museum of Simple Technology in which the principles of self-construction from local materials such as bamboo were applied. He also authored books dealing with technical subjects (For a scientific architecture, Workshop 1975), sociological (L'architecture du survie, L'éclat 2003) and epistemological (L'univers erratique, PUF 1994). The book that best represents, however, Friedman's ethics and spirit is perhaps "Utopies Réalisables (French for feasible utopias), published in France in 1975 and also published in Italian (Quodlibet 2003) describing a project to restructure our society in a genuine democratic way, seeking to escape any elitism through the theory of the critical group. The book is also a fierce critique of the myth of global communication. From the book: "The analysis of social utopias presented in this book implies, implicitly in the act of accusation and criticism of these two 'plagues' of our times which are: 'the state mafia' and the 'media mafia' (press, television etc.). The existence of a state mafia results from the impossibility of the classic democratic state to keep the shape once its size exceeds certain limits, and the 'media mafia' is a direct result of the same inability in global communication (Worldwide). The Internet can be used as an example of this inability, which is not the result of technical difficulties but rather stems from the fundamental human inability to communicate universally (from all to all). The failure of these two generous utopias, democracy and the 'global communication' between men, logically leads to the formation of gangs who act on our behalf against our interests. As well as an indictment, this book will simultaneously be an act of encouragement: the individual should be encouraged not to offer their help or their tacit consent to these two gangs. It is not a call for revolution, but a call to resistance. "
Mobile architecture
Mobile architecture
In 1958, Yona Friedman published his first manifesto: "Mobile architecture". It describes a new kind of mobility not of the buildings, but for the inhabitants, who are given a new freedom. Mobile architecture is the "dwelling decided on by the occupant" by way of "infrastructures that are neither determined nor determining". Mobile architecture embodies an architecture available for a "mobile society". To deal with it, the classical architect invented "the Average Man". The projects of architects in the 1950s were undertaken, according to Friedman, to meet the needs of this make-believe entity, and not as an attempt to meet the needs of the actual members of this mobile society. The teaching of architecture was largely responsible for the "classical" architect's under-estimation of the role of the user. Furthermore, this teaching did not embrace any real theory of architecture. Friedman proposed then teaching manuals for the fundamentals of architecture for the general public. The spatial city, which is a materialization of this theory, makes it possible for everyone to develop his or her own hypothesis. This is why, in the mobile city, buildings should: touch the ground over a minimum area be capable of being dismantled and moved and be alterable as required by the individual occupant.
The Spatial City
The Spatial City
The Spatial City is the most significant application of "mobile architecture". It is raised up on piles which contains inhabited volumes, fitted inside some of the "voids", alternating with other unused volumes, making it look aesthetically pleasant. The basis of its design is that of trihedral elements which operate as "neighbourhoods" where dwellings are distributed without a price. This structure introduces a kind of merger between countryside and city (compare to Paolo Soleri's Arcology concept) and may span: certain unavailable sites, areas where building is not possible or permitted (expanses of water, marshland), areas that have already been built upon (an existing city), above farmland. This spanning technique which includes container structures ushers in a new development in town-planning. Raised plans increase the original area of the city becoming three-dimensional. The tiering of the spatial city on several independent levels, one on top of the other, determines "spatial town-planning" both from the functional and from the aesthetic viewpoint. The lower level may be earmarked for public life and for premises designed for community services as well as pedestrian areas. The piles contain the vertical means of transport (lifts, staircases). The superposition of levels should make it possible to build a whole industrial city, or a residential or commercial city, on the same site. In this way, the Spatial City forms what Friedman would call an "artificial topography". This grid suspended in space outlines a new cartography of the terrain with the help of a continuous and indeterminate homogeneous network with a major positive outcome: this modular grid would authorize the limitless growth of the city. The spaces in this grid are rectangular and habitable modular "voids", with an average area of 25–35 square meters. Conversely, the form of the volumes included within the grid depends solely on the occupant, and their configuration set with a "Flatwriter" in the grid is completely free. Only one half of the spatial city would be occupied. The "fillings" which correspond to the dwellings only actually take up 50% of the three-dimensional lattice, permitting the light to spread freely in the spatial city. This introduction of elements on a three-dimensional grid with several levels on piles permits a changeable occupancy of the space by means of the convertibility of the forms and their adaptation to multiple uses. In Friedman's own words "The city, as a mechanism, is thus nothing other than a labyrinth: a configuration of points of departure, and terminal points, separated by obstacles".
Major written works
Major written works
1958: Mobile architecture 1975: Towards a scientific architecture ISBN 0-262-56019-4 1980: A better life in towns: [campaign for the renaissance of cities] 1999: Yona Friedman. Structures serving the unpredictable ISBN 90-5662-108-4 / ISBN 978-90-5662-108-7 2006: Yona Friedman: Pro Domo ISBN 84-96540-51-0 2010: Yona Friedman Drawings and models ISBN 978-2-84066-406-2 2015: Yona Friedman. The Dilution of Architecture ISBN 978-3-906027-68-5
Exhibitions
Exhibitions
2017: "Yona Friedman. People's Architecture". Centre des arts de l'École Internationale de Genève – EIG Sketches in Permanent Collections: MOMA, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris. 2015: Mobile Architecture: Yona Friedman, Power Station of Art, Shanghai 2014: 1001 nuits + 1 jour, mfc-michèle didier 2014: Dictionnaire, Promenadologues #3, Cneai, Chatou 2014: Yona Friedman, École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Paris-La Villette, Paris 2013: Möbianne, Cneai, Chatou 2013: Iconostase version 3, Cneai, Chatou 2013: Diapositives 1958–2002, Cneai, Chatou 2012: "Yona Friedman. Genesis of a Vision". Centre Archizoom – EPFL 2012: Le Musée de rue et le Musée iconostase, Cneai, Chatou 2012: Handbuch, Berlin – Paris 2012, Galerie Chert Archived 2021-01-22 at the Wayback Machine, Berlin 2011: "Architecture Without Buildings", Ludwig Museum, Budapest 2009: Venice Biennale, Inventing Worlds. 2007: Dare to make your own exhibition, Cneai, Chatou 2007: Shanghai Biennale 2005: Venice Biennale 2003: Venice Biennale 2002: Yokohama Triennale
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1923
Yona Friedman born at Budapest.
2020
Yona Friedman died at Los Angeles.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Budapest.
Birth place
Los Angeles.
Death place
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q542741: Yona Friedman
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
- “Yona Friedman”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority file
- Gemeinsame Normdatei 6527546-9, Exhibition Yona Friedman: Utopías Realizables (2006 : Sevilla).
Unverified · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Yona Friedman, French Architect and Urban Planner Passes Away at 96. ArchDaily. February 21, 2020.
- 2.Harris, William. cities in the sky: re-evaluating yona friedman. 3am. 19 April 2016.
- 3.https://www.kiesler.org/en/kiesler-prize-2018. kiesler.org. Retrieved 11 April 2024.
- 4.Edwin Heathcote (24 June 2016), "Interview: architect Yona Friedman", Financial Times. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
- 5.Cited in the source article.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 4
- www.yonafriedman.com, an online extended monograph with more than a 1000 pictures with project descriptions, available for research and actualities, by Helene Fentener van Vlissingen. This website permits announcements, reviews, a forum and contact facilities.
- Annie Ratti, Yona Friedman, Luca Cerizza, Massimo Bartolini, Anna Daneri, Marco De Michelis, Manuel Orazi "Yona Friedman" Charta/Fondazione Antonio Ratti (March 1, 2009)
- Sabine Lebesque, Helene Fentener van Vlissingen, "Yona Friedman. Structures serving the unpredictable", NAi Publishers, May 1999, / (a monograph of the work of Yona Friedman up to 1999).
- Yona Friedman, Manuel Orazi, "The Dilution of Architecture". Nader Seraj Ed., Park Books, Zurich 2015,
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
authority file
Gemeinsame Normdatei 6527546-9, Exhibition Yona Friedman: Utopías Realizables (2006 : Sevilla).Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Partially resolvedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q542741: Yona FriedmanWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
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Studied at
1- Technion – Israel Institute of TechnologyOrganisation
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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