Fedor Ivanovich Lidval

(also Fredrik Ivanovich Lidval’). Born May 20 (June 1), 1870, in St. Petersburg; died in 1945 in Stockholm (?). Russian architect. Of Swedish descent.

Lidval’ studied under L. N. Benois at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1890 to 1896. He became an academician of architecture in 1909. He worked primarily in St. Petersburg. After 1917 he lived in Sweden.

Just after the turn of the 20th century, Lidval’ designed apartment houses and banks, choosing a style similar to the Northern European variant of art nouveau. His structures of this period are distinguished by the subtle juxtaposition of materials of different colors and textures, by the overall picturesque style of spatial composition, and by the comfortable layout of rooms (for example, the apartment building on Kirov Prospect and buildings on Zheliabov and Sof’ia Perovskaia streets). Between 1910 and 1920, Lidval’ produced designs that expressed a transition to neoclassicism. He used decorative motifs of the Renaissance and, to a lesser extent, of Russian classicism, freely varying them and preserving the graphic quality and lightness of architectural details characteristic of the late art nouveau style (for example, the Azov-Don Bank, now the Central Telephone Exchange, 1907–09; the Astoriia Hotel, 1910–14; and the former Nobel house on Karl Marx Street, between 1910 and 1915).